Learning and Teaching With Technology

LEARNING & TEACHING WITH
TECHNOLOGY
LEARNING & TEACHING
WITH TECHNOLOGY
principles and practices
Edited by Som Naidu
London and Sterling, VA

First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2003 by Kogan Page Limited
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ISBN 0-203-41689-9 Master e-book ISBN
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ISBN 0 7494 3776 6 (Print Edition)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Learning and teaching with technology: principles and practices/
edited by Som Naidu.
p. cm.—(Open and distance learning series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7494-3776-6
1. Telecommunication in higher education. 2. Education,
Higher—Effect of technological innovations on. 3. Learning, Psychology
of. I. Naidu, Som, 1952– II. Series.
LB2342.75 .L43 2003
378.1′ 33–dc21
2002152260
Contents
Notes on contributors vii

Series editor’s foreword xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
Som Naidu
Part I. Content representation

1. Model facilitated learning 11
Marcelo Milrad, Michael Spector and Pål Davidsen
2. Implicit theories of learning and change: their role in 25
the development of e-learning environments for higher
education
Peter Goodyear and Chris Jones
3. Designing graphical, interactive simulations to model 38
scientific problem solving
Laurie Ruberg and John Baro
4. Optimizing domain knowledge representation with 50
multimedia objects
Kinshuk and Ashok Patel
Part II. Activation of learning

5. Using interactive video-based multimedia to scaffold 64
learning in teacher education
John Baird
6. Using authentic patient encounters to engage medical 78
students in a problem-based learning curriculum
Mike Keppell, Kristine Elliott, Gregor Kennedy, Susan
Elliott and Peter Harris
v
7. Virtual learning in cultural studies: matching subject 90

content and instructional delivery
Lee Wallace, Annamarie Jagose and Cathy Gunn
8. Replicating practice complexities—multimedia 105
innovation in social work education
Stuart Evans and Phillip Swain
Part III. Providing socialization support

9. Technology and second language learning through 120
socialization
Robert Debski
10. Developing social presence in online course discussions 136
Karen Swan
11. Socialization through CMC in differently structured 154
environments
Peter Smith and Elizabeth Stacey
12. Collaboration and community through simulation/role- 166
play
Karen Murphy and Yakut Gazi
Part IV. Assessment of learning outcomes

13. Broadening assessment strategies with information 181
technology
Catherine McLoughlin
14. Applying assessment principles and expanding the 195
focus of assessment to enhance learning online
Alex Radloff and Barbara de la Harpe
15. The use of online assessment in stimulating a deeper 206
approach to learning
Carol Johnston
16. Cognitive apprenticeship learning—ensuring far 217
transfer of knowledge through computer-based
assessment
Ashok Patel, Kinshuk and David Russell
Part V. Providing feedback

17. A feedback model and successful e-learning 232
Yiping Lou, Helena Dedic and Steven Rosenfield
vi
18. Interactivity and feedback as determinants of 243

engagement and meaning in e-learning environments
Rod Sims
19. Fundamentals for structuring feedback in an online 258
learning environment
Christopher K Morgan
Commentary. On learning and teaching with technology: 270

principles and practices
Andrew Higgins
Index 273
Notes on contributors
John Baird is from the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne.

His research interests are in the use of interactive, video-based multimedia to
stimulate teacher learning using metacognition, guided reflection, and situated
cognition. Address: Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville,
3010, Australia. E-mail: [email protected].
John Baro is from NASA Classroom of the Future Program, Wheeling Jesuit
University, USA. He develops multimedia instructional material for
elementary through high school math, science, and social studies curriculum.
Address: NASA Classroom of the Future Program, Center for Educational
Technologies, Wheeling Jesuit University, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Pål Davidsen is from the Department of Information Science, University of
Bergen, Norway. He will be acting as president (effective 2003) of the System
Dynamics Society. His current areas of research include System Dynamics
(SD) and SD-based Interactive Learning Environments (ILEs). Address:
Department of Information Science, University of Bergen, Norway. E-mail:
[email protected].
Robert Debski is from the Horwood Language Center at the University of
Melbourne, where he coordinates and teaches courses, supervises postgraduate
students, and conducts research in computer-assisted language learning
(CALL). His research is currently focused on the methodology and directions
of inquiry in CALL, reading and writing hypertext by second language
students, and the significance of technology for the maintenance of indigenous
and community languages. Address: Horwood Language Centre, University of
Melbourne, E-mail: [email protected].
Helena Dedic is from the Department of Physics, Vanier College, Canada.
Her current research interests include: physics education, mathematics
education, computer-mediated learning, and the effectiveness of simulations in
post-secondary mathematics and science education. Address: Vanier College,
821 Avenue Ste-Croix, St-Laurent, Canada. E-mail:
[email protected].
Kristine Elliott is from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences,
the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her extensive involvement in the
viii
conceptualization and development of triggers for medical problems, reflects a

research focus on the use and design of visual media for educational purposes.
Address: Faculty IT Unit, University of Melbourne, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected].
Susan Elliott is from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences,
the University of Melbourne, Australia. Sue has overall responsibility for the
transformation of the medical curriculum into a problem-based learning
curriculum. Address: Faculty Education Unit, University of Melbourne,
Australia. E-mail:[email protected].
Stuart Evans is from the Department of Social Work, University of
Melbourne, Australia. He has extensive practice and educational experience,
particularly in relation to the use of technology in the teaching of interpersonal
practice skills. Address: Department of Social Work, University of
Melbourne, Australia, 3010. E-mail: [email protected].
Yakut Gazi is from the College of Education at Texas A&M University. Her
research interests are in the construction of identity in online environments,
computer-mediated communication, and Web-based instruction. Address:
Texas A&M University, 703 Harrington Tower, College Station, TX 77843–
4225, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Peter Goodyear is from the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning
Technology, Lancaster University, UK. Peter’s current research focuses on
understanding the design of complex learning environments, teaching with the
aid of new technology and technology-supported continuing professional
development, seen as the collaborative construction of ‘working knowledge’.
Address: Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology, Lancaster
University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK. E-mail: [email protected].
Cathy Gunn is Educational Technology Program Leader at the Center for
Professional Development, University of Auckland. Her current research
interests in educational technology include quality assurance, staff
development, gender issues and organizational change management. Address:
Center for Professional Development, University of Auckland, Private Bag
92019, Auckland, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected].
Barbara de la Harpe is from the Faculty of Education, Languages and
Community Services, RMIT University. Her research focus is on student
learning and creating powerful learning environments that support learning,
writing and generic skill development and assessment online. Address: Faculty
of Education, Language and Community Services, RMIT University, Building
220, Bundoora Campus, Plenty Road, Bundoora, PO Box 71, Bundoora,
Victoria 3083, Australia. E-mail: [email protected].
Peter Harris is from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences,
the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has been responsible for the
development of a series of innovative interactive multimedia tutorials in
ix
physiology and is also active in experimental research in physiology and

hypertension and in the development of digital imaging systems for
microscopy. Address: Faculty IT Unit, the University of Melbourne, Australia.
E-mail: [email protected].
Andrew Higgins is from the Flexible Learning Section ofThe Higher
Education Development Center, University of Otago. Address: 75 Union
Place, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail:
[email protected].
Annamarie Jagose teaches in the English Department with Cultural Studies
at the University of Melbourne. She combines her interests in computer-
assisted learning with research in contemporary culture, media and everyday
life. Address: English with Cultural Studies, the University of Melbourne. E-
mail: [email protected].
Chris Jones is from the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning
Technology, Lancaster University, UK. Chris is interested in the connections
between technology and social life and his recent research focused on
understanding the roles and experiences of students and tutors in networked
learning environments. Chris is also interested in the politics of networked
learning understood as both the formal politics expressed by government in
policy initiatives and the micro politics involved in day-to-day interactions.
Address: Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT),
Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1
4YL, UK. E-mail: [email protected].
Carol Johnston is from the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the
University of Melbourne. Her research interests are in the areas of online
assessment and feedback. Address: Teaching and Learning Unit, Faculty of
Economics and Commerce, the University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria
3010, Australia. E-mail: [email protected].
Gregor Kennedy is from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health
Sciences, the University of Melbourne, Australia. His particular interest is in
educational technology research and evaluation. His research interests include
students’ problem-based and self-directed learning and the role motivation
plays in students’ learning processes. Address: Biomedical Multimedia Unit,
The University of Melbourne, Australia. E-mail: [email protected].
Mike Keppell is from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences,
the University of Melbourne, Australia. Mike’s expertise lies in his ability to
combine the operational and development tasks of educational software with
the academic study of curriculum, instructional design and evaluation.
Specifically he focuses on processes involved in optimizing the instructional
designer-subject matter expert interaction. Address: Biomedical Multimedia
Unit, the University of Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected].
x
Kinshuk is from the Information Systems Department at Massey University,

New Zealand. His research interests include learning technologies, distance
learning and adaptive interfaces, with particular focus on Web-based learning
systems. Address: Information Systems Department, Massey University,
Private Bag 11–222, Palmerston North, New Zealand. E-mail:
[email protected].
Yiping Lou is from the Department of Educational Leadership, Research, and
Counseling at Louisiana State University, United States. Her current research
interests include small group and individual learning with technology,
technology-mediated learning processes, feedback design and interactive
distance learning. Address: Department of Educational Leadership, Research,
and Counseling at Louisiana State University, 111 Peabody Hall, Baton
Rouge, LA 70803, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Catherine McLoughlin is from the School of Education at the Australian
Catholic University in Canberra Australia. Her background combines
instructional technology, curriculum design and staff development in higher
education. Catherine has published and researched a range of issues
surrounding the use and evaluation of informational and communications
technologies to support learning. Address: Australian Catholic University, PO
Box 256, Dickson, ACT 2602, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected].
Marcelo Milrad is from the School of Mathematics and Systems
Engineering, at Växjö University in Sweden. He is also responsible for the
Center for Learning Technologies (CLT), a multidisciplinary research center
at Växjö University. His current research interests include the design of
learning environments to support learning about complex domains,
collaborative discovery learning and the development of mobile and wireless
applications to support collaborative learning. Address: Växjö University,
SE-351 95 Växjö, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected].
Christopher Morgan is from the Faculty of Rural Management of the
University of Sydney located at the Orange campus. He has a particular
research interest in making effective use of information and communications
technology for support ing students at a distance. A focus of his research is
approaches to the use of technology to influence educational participation and
persistence. Address: Faculty of Rural Management, the University of
Sydney, P.O.Box 883 Orange, NSW 2800, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected].
Karen Murphy is from the Educational Technology Program, College of
Education, Texas A&M University. She earned her doctoral degree at the
University of Washington in Educational Curriculum and Instruction with a
focus on distance learning. Her research interests are learning collaboratively
in online environments, design of online instruction for constructivist learning
environments, and socio-cultural context of learning at a distance. Address:
xi
Texas A&M University, 703 Harrington Tower, College Station, TX 77843–

4225, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Ashok Patel is from De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. His
research interests include Human Cognition, Intelligent Tutoring Systems and
Human Computer Interaction. Address: CAL Research and Software
Engineering Centre, Bosworth House, De Montfort University, The Gateway,
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK. E-mail: [email protected].
Alex Radloff is from the Faculty of Life Sciences, RMIT University,
Australia. Her research focus is on the development of self-regulation of
student learning, academic and generic skills and their learning and
assessment online. Address: Faculty of Life Sciences, RMIT University,
Bundoora Campus, PO Box 71, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected].
Steven Rosenfield is from the Department of Mathematics, Vanier College,
St Laurent, Canada. His current research interests include mathematics
education, physics education, computer-mediated learning, and the
effectiveness of simulations in post-secondary mathematics and science
education. Address: Department of Mathematics, Vanier College, 821 Avenue
Ste-Croix, St-Laurent, Canada. E-mail: [email protected].
Laurie Ruberg is from NASA Classroom of the Future Program, Center for
Educational Technologies, Wheeling Jesuit University, USA. She designs and
develops curriculum elements for multimedia instructional products and
establishes collaborations with research and development organizations.
Address: NASA Classroom of the Future Program, Center for Educational
Technologies, Wheeling Jesuit University, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
David Russell is from the Graduate School of Business, De Montfort
University, Leicester, United Kingdom. His research interests include
Environmental Accounting and ICT based systems, and pedagogic aspects of
Teaching & Learning systems. Address: Graduate School of Business, Bede
Island Building, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH,
UK. E-mail: [email protected].
Rod Sims is from the Educational Design and Research group at Deakin
University, Australia. He has worked in the broad field of computers and
education for the past twenty years and his research interests are in the
different ways in which learners interact with content in the context of
computer-based learning environments. Address: Learning Services, Deakin
University (Waterfront Campus), Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia. E-mail:
[email protected].
Peter Smith is from the Faculty of Education at Deakin University in
Australia. His current research foci are the use of computer-mediated learning
in the provision of distance education to postgraduate students; and the use of
technology to mediate the delivery of flexible learning programs in industry.
xii
Address: Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. E-mail:

[email protected].
Michael Spector is from the Instructional Design, Development and
Evaluation Program, Syracuse University, USA. He is also the executive vice
president and treasurer of the International Board of Standards for Training,
Performance and Instruction. His current research interests include: Intelligent
support for instructional design and development, cost-effective use of
technology in online teaching, learning in and about complex systems, system
dynamics based learning environments, technology integration in learning and
working environments. Address: Department Instructional Design,
Development and Evaluation. Syracuse University, USA, E-mail:
[email protected].
Elizabeth Stacey is from the Faculty of Education at Deakin University in
Australia. Her current research focus is the development of collaborative
learning through computer-mediated communication among undergraduate
and postgraduate distance education students. Address: Faculty of Education,
Deakin University,Victoria 3217, Australia. E-mail: [email protected].
Phillip Swain is from the Department of Social Work, the University of
Melbourne, Australia. His principal teaching focus is the legal content of social
work practice. Address: Department of Social Work, the University of
Melbourne, Australia, 3010. E-mail: [email protected].
Karen Swan is from the Department of Educational Theory and Practice at
the University of Albany, where she is also the Director of the Learning
Technologies Laboratory and the Summer Technology Institute. Her current
research interests focus on interactivity and presence in asynchronous Web-
based course environments and their effects on learning. Address: 114A,
SUNY, Albany, NY 12222, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Lee Wallace teaches in the Women’s Studies Program at the University of
Auckland and has research interests in computer-assisted learning, film theory
and cultural studies. Address: Women’s Studies Program, University of
Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. E-mail:
[email protected].
Series editor’s foreword
Those of us involved in teaching and training are facing unprecedented

challenges —challenges that are both self-imposed and posed by governments
and funding agencies. We are being asked, not unreasonably, to continually
monitor the academic quality and teaching effectiveness of our courses,
identifying and disseminating good practice, making learning more learner
focused, fostering lifelong learning and independent learning—and to do this
more efficiently. In this context the contribution to be made by information and
communication technologies (ICT) is evident—as Tony Bates realized several
years ago in his book, Technology, Open and Distance Education: ‘Those
countries that harness the power of the new communication and information
technologies will be the powerhouses of the twenty first century’ (Routledge,
1995, p 249).
Certainly, within the UK the decision to increase the proportion of 18–30–
year-olds who benefit from higher education, from about 33 per cent in 2001 to
50 per cent in 2010, represents a formidable challenge. The increase in the
number of learners on our courses and in our institutions will be equivalent to the
creation of another 75 universities, to be achieved without a corresponding
increase in funding. It is an education environment in which the characteristics
of the population of learners with which we have become familiar will change; it
is an environment in which the skills learners need will also change. The student
body will become more heterogeneous as we attract learners from previously
under-represented groups who do not have the traditional entry qualifications—
but different experience and expertise. It will include increasing numbers of
mature-age learners, learners who wish to study part time or flexibly and who
not only have high expectations—since many will be funding themselves—but
who will be demanding. It will be a student body that will need to be IT literate
if it is to benefit from the opportunities available. In such a changing education
and training environment it will not be possible to simply scale up previous
provision—we will have to teach differently. It is a challenge currently being
faced by colleagues in the USA and Southern Africa, Europe, the Far East and
Australasia as they invest in their country’s main asset—its people—and draw
upon the potential of ICT.
xiv
This edited collection by Som Naidu makes a significant contribution to

meeting the challenge facing us. Som has not only assembled an international
team with considerable experience, but has succeeded in focusing their energy
and expertise on the core learning and teaching issues that confront those who
are attempting to address this challenge (ie, subject matter representation,
activation of learning, supporting interaction and socialization, assessing learning
outcomes and providing feedback).
I am sure, like me, you will find the discussion on the principles and practices
in many of the chapters reassuring—others will challenge our current thinking
and practice. Without doubt the ideas and findings will contribute to the ongoing
debate about learning, teaching and technology; it can only benefit our teaching
and our students’ learning.
Fred Lockwood
Manchester, June 2002
Acknowledgements
Several people have contributed to the successful completion of this book

project. My thanks are due foremost to all the authors of the chapters in this book
for their commitment to excellence and rigor in the reporting of their work. It has
been a pleasure working with you all. A large part of the credit goes to Professor
Fred Lockwood, the Series Editor, for his initial impetus and encouragement to
embark on such a project, and then for the pivotal support that he continued to
provide throughout the project. I am very grateful to Dr Angela Bridgland,
Director of the Department of Teaching, Learning and Research Support at the
University of Melbourne for supporting this project and allowing me the time to
work on it. Thanks are due also to Kogan Page, for undertaking the publication
of this work and seeing it through its publication process.
Thank you all.
Som Naidu
Melbourne, August 2002
Introduction
The use of information and communications technology (ICT) in education is

transforming learning and teaching practices in significant ways. For instance,
the integration of computer-mediated communication with multimedia
courseware, electronic libraries and databases has led to the emergence of a
whole new kind of educational experience, namely e-learning or networked
learning (Rosenberg, 2001; Steeples and Jones, 2002). Affordances and
opportunities offered by ICT are also causing educators and educational
providers to rethink and reengineer the nature of their educational practices
(Gibson, 1977; Turvey, 1992). A significant product of this reengineering
includes a shift in the roles of teachers from being ‘providers and deliverers of
subject matter content’ to becoming ‘moderators and facilitators of learning’
within student-centred models of learning and teaching. Some of these models of
learning and teaching include ‘computer-supported collaborative learning’
(Koschmann, 1996; McConnell, 2000), ‘computer-supported problem based
learning’ (Koschmann et al, 1996), and ‘distributed problem based learning’
(Koschmann, 2002).
These models of learning and teaching are closely associated with a growing
interest among educators and educational technologists in the capabilities of ICT
for leveraging the learning and teaching transaction. Educators are enthusiastic
about how they can use ICT to improve their teaching activities, which include
the engagement of students with subject matter content, activation of learning,
assessment of learning outcomes and provision of feedback to their students.
Educational technology researchers are inquisitive about the influences of ICT
on the achievement of content-specific as well as generic learning outcomes and
the processes of learning, including students’ approaches to study, their
motivation for learning and engagement with the subject matter content.
This book is an attempt to address that interest and enthusiasm of educators
and educational technologists. It is neither a book about information and
communications tools and technologies nor a book full of case study reports of
educational technology applications. It is a book about the core processes of the
learning and teaching transaction, specifically addressing how ICT can be used
to leverage these core processes to achieve rich and productive learning
2 LEARNING AND TEACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY
environments. The contributions in this book are organized around the core
processes of learning and teaching namely:
• subject matter representation;

• activation of learning and engagement of students with that subject matter
content;
• encouragement of socialization and interaction between and among students;
• assessment of learning outcomes; and
• provision of feedback to students.
Together, these contributions demonstrate how the opportunities that ICT affords
can be used creatively to leverage the entire learning and teaching transaction,
and individually they show how these opportunities can be used to leverage
particular activities in the learning and teaching transaction.
The contributions in this book will be of interest to educators and courseware
developers in all sectors of education and training who are either using or
planning on integrating ICT into their teaching activities. However, due to the
selection of material in the book, it will be of particular use to teachers in the
higher education sector who have an interest in the opportunities afforded by ICT
for leveraging the learning and teaching transaction.
Part I of the book focuses attention on subject matter content representation.
Every learning and teaching transaction incorporates a defined body of content,
which may be in the form of a set of facts, principles, procedures, skills or
attitudes in which a group of targeted learners are expected to demonstrate
competency. Quite often this body of subject matter content is organized
according to themes or by topics. While this is an expedient and at times a useful
way of organizing the selected body of subject matter, constructivist thinkers
argue that this approach is not the only way, and certainly not a very meaningful
way of representing content (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbuilt,
1990, 1993; Schank, 1997; Schank and Cleary, 1995). They suggest that focusing
attention on the facts, principles or procedures runs the risk of rote learning and
learning for short-term gains such as passing impending examinations. There
have been long standing and very strong arguments put forth in favour of
building and orchestrating learning environments that immerse learners in
authentic learning experiences where facts, principles and procedures are
embedded in activities, and engagement in this experience leads to the
development of desirable competencies (Brown et al, 1989; Dewey, 1933, 1938;
Piaget, 1952). These learning experiences are designed not so much to instruct as
to provide the contexts wherein understanding and insight can be uniquely
cultivated. They serve as ‘micro worlds and incubators for knowledge’ within
which learners are able to deal with complex concepts in tangible and concrete
ways (Papert, 1993, p 120), and where subject matter knowledge is allowed to
evolve through the processes of exploring, inquiring, and constructing
representations and/or artefacts (Hannafin and Land, 1997).
INTRODUCTION 3
The four chapters in this part articulate key principles in the representation of
subject matter content with the help of notable experiences with ICT. In the first
chapter, Milrad, Spector and Davidsen develop a very powerful and convincing
argument for the use of a theoretically grounded instructional design framework
they call ‘model-facilitated learning’, which incorporates the use of modelling
tools, construction kits and system dynamics simulations to provide multiple
representations to help students develop an understanding of problem scenarios
that are complex and dynamic. The concept of model-facilitated learning
comprises a significant advancement to instructional design practice as it adds to
the corpus of existing knowledge on perspectives on instructional design such as
learning by designing’ (Kolodner et al, 1998), case-based reasoning (Schank and
Cleary, 1995), problem-based learning (Barrows andTamblyn, 1980), and role-
play simulation (Naidu et al, 2000). The approach distinguishes ‘learning by
modelling’ from ‘learning using models’.
In Chapter 2 Goodyear and Jones draw on the formative evaluation of a major
learning technology development programme to illustrate the value of
uncovering implicit, informal theories about learning, and also about educational
change that can be found embedded in the work of courseware development
teams. Ruberg and Baro show how such a team comprising curriculum
developers, instructional designers, software engineers, scientists, researchers
and practising teachers set about to employ graphical, interactive simulations to
model problem solving and promote scientific inquiry. Capping the topic of
subject matter content representation, Kinshuk and Patel also propose something
along those lines, which they call the ‘multiple representation’ approach and
which articulates a set of guidelines for presenting domain knowledge by guiding
the process of multimedia objects selection, navigational objects selection and
integration of multimedia objects to suit different learner needs.
Part II in the book focuses attention on activation of learning and engagement
of students with the subject matter content. This involves selective use of
learning strategies to advance learning and enhance learning capability.
Technology-enhanced student-centred learning environments do not necessarily
lead to learning efficiency or effectiveness. Indeed for some learners such open-
ended learning environments can be quite daunting, posing a real threat to their
success and motivation to learn. While creating opportunities for learning, these
open-ended learning environments also create demands on learners for new skills
in managing complex information and higher order cognitive processes. Being
successful in such learning environments requires learners to possess the ability
to organize, evaluate and monitor the progress of their learning. Not all learners
possess these skills, and have to be taught how to take advantage of the
opportunities that technology-enhanced and open-ended learning environments
afford (see Jonassen, 1988; Weinstein and Mayer, 1986).
The four chapters in this part focus attention on creative uses of ICT in
influencing learning by engaging students with the subject matter. In the first
chapter on this subject, Baird shows how video captures of teachers and children
engaged in live and authentic classroom activities can be employed to scaffold

learning in professional teacher education. In the following chapter, Keppell,
Elliott, Kennedy, Elliot and Harris describe a similar strategy that uses
multimedia-based authentic patient encounters to engage medical students in a
problem-based learning curriculum. These simulated patient encounters are
called ‘medical triggers’ and they involve the use of photographs, shockwave
movies and QuickTime video clips to produce powerful learning materials. In the
next chapter Wallace, Jagose and Gunn describe powerful applications of
animation along with photographs, shockwave movies and QuickTime video
clips to engage students in the study of new and evolving subject matter domains
such as Cultural Studies. Rounding off this part, the final chapter by Evans and
Swain shows how simulated case encounters of authentic practice situations can
be cleverly used to address the challenges posed in the study of practice-based
subject matter such as Social Work, which requires the integration of theoretical
knowledge, practice wisdom and organizational contexts.
Part III in the book focuses attention on supporting interaction and
socialization between and among students. There is evidence that social climate
and the influence of peers is positively correlated with a range of learning
outcomes (see Slavin, 1990; 1994). However, unstructured social contact and
communication alone are not enough. Formal mechanisms such as cooperative
and collaborative learning practices have to be integrated into the teaching and
learning transaction to benefit student learning in any significant way. The four
chapters in this part focus attention on how ICT is used to integrate such
processes into educational practice and how these practices are influencing
teachers’ approaches to teaching and students’ approaches to learning. In the
first chapter Debski explores how computer-mediated communications
technology can support the role of project-based work and social interaction in
second language learning. The critical ingredient is the careful orchestration and
moderation of that social interaction, because interaction alone, with or without
technology, is not going to be sufficient. In the following chapter, Swan shows
how social presence can be engendered in asynchronous computer-mediated
conferencing, which can be rather alienating in the absence of vocal and non-
verbal interactions. Swan raises issues surrounding the development of feelings
of presence and notions of immediacy, and suggests categories of verbal
immediacy behaviours to account for the development of presence in the absence
of vocal and non-verbal interactions in asynchronous online discussions.
The importance of structure in computer-supported collaborative learning
opportunities is also taken up by Smith and Stacey in the following chapter. They
describe their experiences in relation to student participation, style of
contributions, and the relationship between socialization processes and
knowledge construction within the context of two computer-mediated
communication structures, which make a different set of demands on participants
and provide differing collaborative learning opportunities. In the final chapter on
supporting interaction and socialization, Murphy and Gazi discuss how
INTRODUCTION 5
collaboration and community building can be supported in a computer-mediated

collaborative learning environment with scenario-based role-play designs that
can also support multiple role representation for participants (ie, students-as-
facilitators and students-as-participants) within the technology infrastructure.
Part IV focuses attention on assessing learning outcomes, as learning and
learner performance have to be appropriately assessed. A wide range of
strategies may be applied as part of this process, and the choice of strategy will
vary according to the intended learning outcomes and the learning tasks that have
been prescribed. Assessing learning outcomes is concerned with determining
whether or not learners have acquired the desired type or level of capability, and
whether learners have benefited from the educational experience (ie, if they have
achieved the intended learning outcomes, and if their performance has changed
in any way). A measure of learning outcomes requires learners to complete tasks
that demonstrate the extent to which they have achieved the standards specified
in the learning outcomes. In order to ascertain the most realistic and valid
assessment of performance, these tasks have to be as authentic as possible, or
similar to on-the-job conditions. Methods of assessment can be classified as
either criterion- or norm-referenced (Grondlund, 1985). A criterion-referenced
measure is targeted at the criteria specified in the learning outcome. Criterion-
referenced measures require learners to demonstrate presence of learned
capabilities at specific criterion levels. A norm-referenced measure on the other
hand, compares a learner’s performance with that of other learners in the cohort.
The four chapters in this part focus attention on how ICT affordances can be
used to leverage approaches to the assessment of learning outcomes. In the first
chapter McLoughlin suggests that traditional models of assessment do not
readily transfer to the online learning environment, as they are often ‘one-shot’
quantitative measures of student performance. She suggests that newer models of
authentic forms of online assessment are needed to utilize the rich
communicative resources of ICT and offer expanded opportunities for assessing
learning outcomes. In this chapter she discusses design guidelines for how
creative uses of ICT can help extend the range of assessment strategies. Some of
these strategies include digital portfolios, team-based assessment and online
problem-solving tasks for self and peer assessment.
In the following chapter Radloff and de la Harpe reiterate similar sentiments in
suggesting that conventional assessment practices need to be adapted to include
both content and process learning outcomes in order to enhance student learning
online. They suggest that opportunities afforded by ICT are able to expand the
focus of conventional assessment practices and support the assessment of
motivational, affective and metacognitive aspects of learning. The challenge for
course developers is to be able to apply sound principles of designing assessment
strategies to expand this focus. The following two chapters show how this goal
might be achieved. In her chapter, Johnston shows how online assessment
strategies can be used to influence a deeper approach to learning among students
that is most likely to achieve the desired outcomes of the various stakeholders in
higher education. In the following chapter, Patel, Kinshuk and Russell show how
formative computer-based assessment has been used in the ‘Byzantium’
intelligent tutoring system to achieve far transfer of knowledge. Byzantium was
produced by a consortium of six universities under the Teaching and Learning
Technology Program (TLTP) of the UK Higher Education Funding Councils.
Part V in the book focuses attention on providing feedback to students. Any
learning and teaching transaction that views learning as a process of mutual
influence between learners and their instructional resources must involve
feedback, for without it any meaningful mutual influence is impossible. From a
review of research on the effects of feedback more generally, Kulhavy (1977)
described four conditions of feedback:
1. Feedback is most potent when it corrects errors.

2. The error-correcting action of feedback is more effective when it follows a
response about which the student felt relatively certain.
3. The effectiveness of feedback is enhanced if it is delivered after the learner
has made a response
4. Feedback is more effective when its availability in advance of learner
response is controlled.
Furthermore, as suggested by Kulhavy, feedback is also distinguishable

according to its content, which is identifiable by:
• load (ie, the amount of information given in the feedback from simple correct-
incorrect responses to fuller explanations);
• form (ie, the structural similarity between information in the feedback
compared to that in the instructional presentation); and
• type of information (ie, whether the feedback restated information from the
original task, referred to information given elsewhere in the instruction, or
provided new information).
Feedback may differ according to its intention, which refers to whether it was
intentional and designed specifically to inform learners about the quality and
accuracy of their responses, or if it happened to be an incidental consequence of
the instructional environment. Intentional feedback can be delivered in a variety
of ways: via direct interpersonal communication between instructor and learners,
and/or through mediated forms such as with innovative use of ICT. Intentional
feedback is highly specific and directly related to the performance of the task
(Bangert-Drowns et al, 1991). Feedback also differs according to its target. Some
feedback may be primarily designed to influence affective learning outcomes
such as interest and motivation. Other forms of feedback are designed to
influence the achievement of specific subject matter knowledge. Most commonly
though, feedback is targeted at indicating how learners are performing specified
INTRODUCTION 7
tasks and whether they are correctly applying the learned principles and
procedures (Schimmel, 1983).
The three chapters in this part of the book focus attention on how these
fundamental principles of feedback can be leveraged with clever use of ICT. In
the first chapter Lou, Dedic and Rosenfield posit that effective feedback requires
careful design and orchestration. Based on their experience in science and social
science classes, these authors discuss a model of effective feedback, which they
argue can be used to support student learning in computer-mediated learning
environments. Their model portrays learners and teachers as actors who provide
and receive feedback in interlocking loops during learning activities. In the
following chapter Sims argues that successful and effective feedback is brought
about by focusing on principles of good communication, the specific roles of
learners and teachers, the interactions between people and content, and the
impact of cognitive, social, and teaching presence. Furthermore, he suggests that
appropriate implementation of these factors will enable informative, timely and
individual feedback for the learner that will support consistent communication,
engagement with content, and meaningful construction of knowledge. In the
third and final chapter, Morgan draws attention to the problems of providing
feedback to learners where geographical isolation or other circumstances
diminish the potential for learners to receive formative feedback from their
instructors or their peers in a timely fashion. He argues that effective feedback
strategies lie at the core of educational success for such students, that these
strategies are fundamental to a rich educational experience, and their absence
will negatively influence course completion rates. He reviews several such
strategies to overcome this disadvantage and form bridges with and among
students in such difficult circumstances, with astute use of ICT.
We hope that you find the contributions in this volume inspiring and useful.
Your reflections on this material and reactions to the ideas presented here will be
most welcome. Please direct all such correspondence to the editor of the book at
[email protected].
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Part 1
Content representation
Chapter 1
Model facilitated learning
Marcelo Milrad, Michael Spector and Pål Davidsen
Introduction
Technology changes what we do and what we can do. People change on account
of technology. Technology in support of learning and instruction is no different.
Instructional technology changes what teachers and learners do and can do. This
is especially true when the Internet and distributed technologies are taken into
consideration. Learning research has also evolved and increased our
understanding of how people learn different things in different situations. There
has been a trend to apply emerging instructional technologies to support learning
and instruction in ever more challenging and complex domains (Spector and
Anderson, 2000). Such a trend is quite natural. Once it is understood how to use
technology to support mastery of simple skills, it makes good sense to explore
more advanced uses of technology. We support this trend and believe, along with
many others, that technology can be effectively used in distributed learning
environments to support learning in and about complex systems, which is the
focus of the discussion in this chapter (Spector and Anderson, 2000).
Modelling and simulation tools are gaining importance as a means to explore,
comprehend, learn and communicate complex ideas, especially in distributed
learning and work environments (Maier and Größler, 2000). Students are
building and using simulations in both guided discovery and expository learning
environments (Alessi, 2000). Of particular interest is whether and when one
learns by building simulations or by interacting with existing simulations
(Spector, 2000). To explore this interest, we provide a framework for the
integration of modelling and simulations deployable in collaborative tele-
learning environments. We focus on a particular modelling and simulation
approach called ‘system dynamics’ (Forrester, 1985).
The system dynamics community has focused primarily on learning by
creating simulation models, although some researchers are becoming more
sophisticated in recognizing a variety of different learning situations and
requirements (Alessi, 2000; Gibbons, 2001; Spector, 2000). The system dynamics
community believes in the value of using system dynamics to improve
12 CONTENT REPRESENTATION
understanding of complex, dynamic systems (Davidsen, 1996; Forrester, 1985;

Sterman, 1994). This general commitment allows for both learning with models
and learning by modelling.
The ability to model complex systems requires being able to define a model
and use it to understand some complex phenomena—to make connections
between and among parts and to analyse the model’s ability to represent relevant
aspects of the perceived world (Jackson et al, 2000). In the construction of
models using systems dynamics tools, learners engage in cognitive and social
processes that appear to promote understanding. However, it seems unreasonable
to conclude that deep understanding in a complex domain always requires one to
become an expert system dynamics modeller (Spector, 2000).
Considerable research has documented a variety of difficulties with learning
concepts relevant to understanding complex systems in a variety of disciplines
(Dörner, 1996; Kozma, 2000). For example, many people have difficulty with
the following:
• understanding the effects of non-linear relationships over time;

• keeping the entire system in mind when trying to resolve an apparently
localized problem;
• appreciating the full range of control and influence possible within a complex
system; and
• generalizing lessons learnt from a particular problem context to a different
problem situation.
How can learners acquire and maintain deep understanding about difficult-to-
understand subject matter? How can modelling and simulation in complex
domains be best used to facilitate learning? Understanding complex system
behaviour involves the ability to provide causal and structural explanations as
well as the ability to anticipate and explain changes in underlying causes and
structures. This kind of understanding is not acquired easily nor is it likely to be
acquired from observations of either real or simulated behaviour (Dörner, 1996).
However, an appropriate methodology linked with collaborative and distributed
technologies can significantly enhance such learning.
Our motivating concern is to help learners manage complexity in ways that
contribute to improved learning and deep understanding. To achieve this goal,
learning theory (socio-constructivism), methodology (system dynamics) and
technology (collaborative tele-learning) should be suitably integrated (Spector
and Anderson, 2000). We call this integration Model Facilitated Learning (MFL)
(Spector and Davidsen, 2000).
A theoretically grounded framework

Our understanding of the developmental, cognitive, and social dimensions of
learning improved in the last half of the 20th century. Research inspired by
MODEL FACILITATED LEARNING 13
Vygotsky and others suggests that recognizing the need for learners to engage
peers in dialogue concerning challenging new concepts and to work in
collaboration with colleagues on difficult tasks produces desirable and persisting
improvements in understanding (Jonassen et al, 2000; Rouwette et al, 2000;
Spector et al, 1999; Wells, 1999). Distributed technologies (eg, networked
learning communities) are well suited to support such collaboration.
Learning in complex and ill-structured domains places significant cognitive
demands on learners, as appropriately recognized by the medical community.
Feltovich et al (1996) note that one of the difficulties involves the
misunderstanding of situations in which there are multiple, co-occurring
processes or dimensions of interaction. In these kinds of situations, learners often
confine their understanding to one or a small number of the operative dimensions
rather than the many that are pertinent (see also Dörner, 1996). Technology that
depicts dynamic interactions can be of particular help in this area. The learning
perspective we find most appropriate is based on notions derived from situated
and problem-based learning (Lave and Wenger, 1990), especially as informed by
cognitive flexibility theory (Spiro et al, 1988). Instructional design methods and
principles consistent with this learning perspective can be derived from
elaboration theory (Reigeluth and Stein, 1983) and from cognitive apprenticeship
(Collins et al, 1989). MFL is derived from these learning and instructional
theories. That these theories are reasonably well established but not embraced by
the system dynamics learning community is somewhat disturbing.
Situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1990) is a general theory of knowledge
acquisition based on the notion that learning (stable, persisting changes in
knowledge, skills and behaviour) occurs in the context of activities that typically
involve a problem, others, and a culture. This perspective is based on
observations indicating that learners gradually move from newcomer status
(operating on the periphery of a community of practitioners) to more advanced
status (operating at the centre of the community of practitioners). As learners
become more advanced in a domain, they typically become more engaged with
the central and challenging problems that occupy a particular group of
practitioners.
Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) (Spiro et al, 1988) shares with situated
and problem-based learning the view that learning is context dependent, with the
associated need to provide multiple representations and varied examples so as to
promote generalization and abstraction processes. Feltovich et al (1996) argue
that CFT and related approaches can help learners develop skills for thinking and
learning about complex subject matter. Multiple representations naturally
emerge in collaborative and group work. When learners are distributed in various
settings and circumstances, it is essential to support multiple representations;
CFT suggests this is important even for individual learners. Moreover, learning
should be supported with a variety of problems and cases, which is especially
important in distributed learning environments. However, people seem to prefer
single and simple models. These restricted perspectives may be detrimental to
learning (Feltovich et al, 1996; Kozma, 2000). As knowledge is used and

represented in many ways it becomes more meaningful and more powerful.
Towards this end, CFT advocates multiple types of models, multiple
representations, alternative conceptualizations, varying levels of representational
granularity, and so on. Additionally, CFT places particular emphasis on the
importance of learner-constructed and learner-modifiable representations.
MFL, as a realization of CFT through system dynamics and distributed
technology, provides learners with the opportunity and challenge to become model
builders, to exchange and discuss models with peers, and to experiment with
models to test hypotheses and explore alternative explanations for various
phenomena. We believe that such modelling activities are often appropriate
activity for advanced learners, but model building is not always required in order
to understand some aspects of a complex and dynamic system. Moreover, we
believe that other activities, including interacting with existing models and
simulations, are often appropriate precursors to model building activities. MFL
advocates a sequence of learning activities that begins with some kind of
concrete operation, manipulating tangible objects in order to solve specific
problems (Milrad et al, 2000). As these operations are mastered, learners can
then progress to more abstract representations and solve increasingly complex
problems. A set of principles to guide a MFL elaboration sequence is:
1. Situate the learning experience. Provide an opening scenario or a concrete

case to familiarize learners with the complexity of the domain and with
typical problems encountered in that domain.
2. Present problems and challenges of increasing complexity related to the
opening scenario. For instance, suppose the initial situation involves
managing a production plant. A problem sequence might be to determine
existing inventory, predict future orders and provide a plan for maintaining a
stable inventory. As participants gain expertise, other aspects of the
enterprise can be brought into consideration, such as the effect of overtime
on workers as they try to keep up with orders or the effect of backlogged
orders on future orders and so on.
3. Involve learners in responding to a set of increasingly complex inquiries
about the problem situation. For example, suppose that the sales force has
predicted a seasonal increase in orders. A number of inquiries about the
effect on existing inventories can be constructed and used to stimulate
individual and small group discussion and experimentation in order to
provide answers about predicted system behaviour.
4. Challenge learners to develop decision-making rules and guidelines for a
variety of anticipated situations. In this case, a great deal of experimentation
with models and simulations is appropriate. As the challenges increase in
complexity, it is at this stage of learning that it is appropriate to provide
opportunities for learners to modify models or create new models.
To summarize, we accept the notion that complex concepts are best learnt in
context—a problem setting in which the learner must apply and use the relevant
concepts and knowledge to solve meaningful problems. Such learning should
improve both retention (by providing a relevant context) and transfer (by
providing multiple representations). The principle of graduated complexity
(Spector and Davidsen, 2000) is used to guide the design of learning sequences.
In addition, the notion of socially-situated learning experiences threads
throughout such a sequence. Such learning principles suggest that the coupling
of system dynamics with collaborative and distributed technologies has strong
potential. Next we examine the role of models in learning.
The potentials of models in learning

In this section we illustrate how models can be used to represent complex subject
matter. It is worth emphasizing that the steps in a graduated complexity model
should not be considered fixed or rigid. The model we advocate recognizes
individual and group differences and supports the notion of iterative
development of learning, understanding and expertise.
Learning with models and learning by modelling are discussed separately
here, but in a learning or problem-solving environment it is conceivable that both
might be involved (albeit for different purposes and in different ways). In MFL,
there are three stages of learner development with associated instructional
approaches (Spector and Davidsen, 2000):
1. problem-orientation (problem confronting and problem solving), in which

learners are presented with typical problem situations and asked to solve
relatively simple problems;
2. inquiry-exploration (hypothesis formulation and experimentation), in which
learners are challenged to explore a complex domain and asked to identify
and elaborate causal relationships and dominant underlying structures; and
3. policy-development (decision-making rule and global system elaboration), in
which learners are immersed in the full complex system and asked to
develop rules and heuristics to guide decision making in order to create
stability or avoid undesirable situations.
The stages and principles of MFL correspond with major components of van
Merriënboer’s (1997) 4C/ID model and Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) (see
Table 1.1). Interestingly, the methods in the 4C/ID model are primarily focused
on an analysis of the subject domain whereas Dreyfus and Dreyfus focus
primarily on the learner. Naturally, both are important considerations for an
instructional designer.
The principle of graduated complexity in MFL suggests a sequence of learner
challenges:
Table 1.1 MFL, learning development and related models
1. Challenge learners to characterize the standard behaviour of the complex

system (how the system behaves over time with an indication of how
components are interrelated).
2. Challenge learners to identify key variables and points of leverage with
respect to a desired outcome.
3. Challenge learners to identify and explain the causes for observed system
behaviour, especially in terms of key influence factors that might be subject
to control and manipulation.
4. Challenge learners to reflect on the dynamic aspects of the system in the
context of decision and policy guides to achieve desired outcomes.
5. Challenge learners to encapsulate learning in terms of a rationale for system
structure, decision-making guidelines, and an elaborated strategy for policy
formulation.
6. Challenge learners to diversify and generalize to new problem situations.
(To assess deep understanding one might ask learners to create a dynamic
model relevant to an apparently new problem situation that is likely to have
an underlying structure similar to a problem situation already resolved by

the learner.)
Throughout the various stages learners are challenged to start meaningful

discussions with peers about problems, models and proposed solutions, all of
which are well supported by available Web-based technologies. Such discussions
help learners reflect about the subject matter and encourage peer-peer learning
and group collaboration.
Next we shall provide examples. We follow Alessi (2000) in distinguishing
learning with models from learning by modelling. We believe that learning with
models is generally well suited for the earlier learning stages that often involve
simple procedural tasks and simpler conceptual foundations (similar to
algorithmic-based learning in 4C/ID), whereas learning by modelling is generally
better suited to more advanced stages of development targeted at causal
understanding and mastery of complex procedures not amenable to formulaic or
standard solution (similar to heuristic-based learning in 4C/ID).
MFL emphasizes socially-situated learning processes. A suggestion of how to
support collaboration with modelling tools in a discovery setting has been made
by van Joolingen (2000). In the construction of models using systems dynamics
tools, learners engage in cognitive and social processes that promote collaborative
knowledge building. Rouwette et al (2000) argue that a collaborative approach to
model and policy design is effective for learning and understanding. In these
cases, we see theory, methodology and technology all coming together.
Learning with models

Model facilitated learning advocates learning with models as an instructional
approach to introduce learners to a new domain or problem situation and to
promote learning simpler procedures and associated concepts. Causal loop
diagrams (also called causal influence diagrams) are quite good at providing a
representation of an entire system. Such diagrams can be used to support an
elaboration of a problem scenario, knowledge elicitation and assessment of
understanding (Davidsen et al, 1999).
A meaningful learning activity consistent with MFL is to present learners with
a problem scenario and ask them to construct an annotated causal loop diagram.
Such an activity serves to centre thinking around meaningful problems and is
typically effective in facilitating small group collaboration. This activity can also
be used to assess progress of learning and predict how well a learner will perform
in future complex situations (Christensen et al, 2000). Here is a sample scenario
that we have used in our research:
The Kaibab Plateau is situated on the north side of the Grand Canyon in
Arizona in the USA and consists of some 727,000 acres. Prior to 1907 the
deer herd there numbered about 4,000. In 1907, a law was passed banning
all hunting of deer from the area. By 1918 the deer population increased
tenfold, and by 1924 the herd had reached 100,000. Then it started to
decrease and by 1936 to 1940 it was around 10,000. The deer feed on
grass. Their natural predators in the region are primarily cougars (mountain
lions).
Causal loop diagrams can be used to represent the problem situation and help
facilitate problem solving. A simple problem might be to indicate how a hunting
policy affects the deer population over time. A more complex problem is to
develop a hunting policy that achieves a particular goal over a sustained period
of time. Causal loop diagrams can also be used to initially determine how people
think about a complex domain in comparison with domain experts and then for
assessment of progress through a sequence of learning activities.
For example, learners discuss how an increase in deer created by a restrictive
hunting policy might lead to competition for a limited source of food (grass) and
eventually result in overgrazing and elimination of that source of food. This
could then lead to starvation of a significant portion of the deer population in
spite of well-intentioned attempts to help deer thrive. It is useful in the early
stages of learning development to challenge learners to identify what they
believe to be the most influential factor, perturb the system with a slight change
and then predict the outcome. This technique is especially effective when the
outcome is counter-intuitive as this begins to instil in learners an appreciation of
the complexity of the situation, generates much discussion, and initiates a search
for an explanation. Such cognitive dissonance can promote learning. In the
terminology of MFL, learner-recognized and learner-generated knowledge gaps
in the problem-orientation stage provide an effective stepping stone for the
inquiry-exploration stage of learner development.
Interaction with a simulation is useful in determining if predicted outcomes
occur. If historical data exist, then those data are relevant as well. In short, the
inquiry-exploration stage is well supported with learner interactions with
simulation models. This type of learning has a reasonably well-developed history
within the system dynamics educational community in the form of ‘management
flight simulators’ (Sterman, 1988). There exist popular simulations to support
such interactions, such as SimCity and related simulation models (Alessi, 2000).
Typically these simulations are run in cycles. After each cycle, small groups of
learners are asked to indicate the current state of the system, provided an
opportunity to change a few key factors and asked to predict what the state of the
system will be at the end of the next cycle. Spector and Davidsen (1997) report
that this black-box approach has certain advantages and disadvantages. The
advantages are that peer-peer discussion and collaboration are effectively
supported. Indeed, most of the learning appears to occur in the small group
discussions and not in direct interaction with the simulation model. This type of
activity is suitable for networked learning environments where learners can
collaborate in this discussion process, and it is consistent with evidence
presented by van Joolingen (2000) that discovery behaviour displayed by

learners may improve under the influence of collaboration.
The disadvantage is that without access to the underlying simulation model,
learners are unable to develop deep causal understanding of a complex system. As
learners become more proficient in using the simulation, they require access to
the underlying simulation model in order to advance their understanding
(Davidsen and Spector, 1997; Spector and Davidsen, 1997).
Learning by modelling
As learners gain confidence in a complex system, it is appropriate and productive
to provide opportunities to modify existing simulation models and to create
alternative representations. There are two principles that provide a foundation for
making the transition from learning with models to learning by modelling. First,
learners need to appreciate that there exist connections between underlying
system structure and observed outcomes (system behaviour). There are a number
of ways to support this transition requirement. Including multiple representations
(eg, causal loop diagrams, stock and flow diagrams and behavioural diagrams)
appears to be an effective technique based on the earlier discussion of cognitive
flexibility theory (Spiro et al, 1988); see Figure 1.1.
The second principle that lays the foundation for learning by modelling is a
direct application of graduated complexity. The notion is that the learner should
first establish the ability to fill in parts of an existing model in a way that is
consistent with observed system behaviour. This principle is closely linked with
the previous principle and contributes to the learner’s understanding of structure
(cause) and behaviour (effect). Davidsen (1996) suggests that linking structure to
behaviour and creating structures to account for behaviour are important building
blocks of deep understanding. In a more general sense, hypothesizing about
potential causal relationships and then testing those hypotheses is important to
building up understanding in a complex domain.
An interesting technique used by Davidsen (1996) to facilitate progress in the
policy-development stage is to start with what might be characterized as simpler
complex system behaviour and ask learners to create models that account for
system behaviour. Learners are then given a goal (eg, stabilize the deer
population in the Kaibab Plateau) and asked to develop a decision-making
guideline to achieve that goal. The policy is then tested in an arbitrarily wide
variety of situations that might conceivably arise with regard to such a system
(eg, drought conditions, diseases among the predator population, etc). Learners
are asked to reflect on their understanding of the situation along the way.
Moreover, the process of constructing such simulation models requires a
person to do all of the kinds of activities typically associated with experts:
representing causal relationships, formulating hypotheses about those
relationships, creating experimental settings to test hypotheses, identifying key
leverage points and influence factors in a system, developing policies to guide
Figure 1.1 Multiple representations
decision making with regard to those factors subject to human control, and so on.
These in fact represent patterns of expert behaviour that are generally desirable
to engender in advanced learners.
Learning by modelling and learning with models

In this particular section we will illustrate how these two approaches can be
combined for the design of meaningful learning activities to support complex
learning. An example used in our research consists of giving learners the
opportunity to understand the behaviour and underlying structure of a complex
problem in an ecological system (Ford, 1999). Learners should also be able to
understand the dynamics of the decision-making process with regard to a
complex system; in this case it is in the domain of water quality.
To learn about acid rain, learners build and test a dynamic model or portions
of a model. Relevant situated learning takes place as learners build a device with
sensors and a software tool for collecting and analysing data, and then
hypothesize about relationships and test those hypotheses. Learners have access
to a number of interactive tools supporting different aspects of complex learning,
including a modelling tool, a construction and programmable kit and a
Table 1.2 Computational media to supportlearning about complex domains
simulation environment, all of which are open for student use and manipulation.
The specific tools provided to learners are Model Builder, the LEGO-DACTA
Robotics System, the ROBOLAB programming language, and Powersim.
Following the design principles of MFL, learners are challenged to solve a
variety of complex problems (see Table 1.2) according to the three stages of
learner development: 1) problem-orientation; 2) inquiry-exploration; and 3)
policy-development. Figure 1.2 shows results obtained while learners used the
system dynamics simulation to explore the impact of acid rain on the fish
population of the lake during a five-year period.
In this particular example, we see theory, methodology and technology all
coming together. Preliminary results suggest that the MFL approach is effective
in the sense that this learning environment engages learners in solving complex
problems through collaborative knowledge building and through interactive
modelling, design and construction of system dynamics simulations (Milrad,
2001).
Conclusions
We conclude with a few comments about evaluating MFL and recommendations
for future development and exploration. MFL should be held to established
instructional design principles. Merrill (2001) provides a set of first principles
for instruction:
1. Principle of Problem Centeredness: Learning is effective when learners are

engaged in solving real-world problems.
Figure 1.2 Using system dynamics simulation

2. Principle of Learner Activation: Learning is effective when existing learner
knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge and skills.
3. Principle of Demonstration: Learning is effective when desired knowledge
applications and skills are demonstrated for learners.
4. Principle of Application: Learning is effective when learners are required to
apply new knowledge and skills.
5. Principle of Integration: Learning is effective when new knowledge and
skills are integrated into the learner’s world.
Does MFL satisfy these principles? The MFL problem-orientation stage satisfies
Merrill’s principle of problem centeredness, and the inquiry-exploration stage
satisfies Merrill’s principle of application. We accept all of Merrill’s principles
and believe that MFL provides an appropriate guide for application of these
principles in complex domains using models and simulations.
Our work suggests that the following deserve further exploration:
• support for representing multiple perspectives of complex, dynamic
problems;
• technology support for learning as a shared, collaborative activity, particularly
in the context of bridging multiple perspectives in distributed settings;
• simulation and model-centred support in terms of interactions, collaborations
and reflections ‘around the simulation’ and ‘beyond the simulation’.
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Chapter 2
Implicit theories of learning and change:
their role in the development of e-learning
environments for higher education
Peter Goodyear and Chris Jones
Introduction
This chapter addresses the twin issues of content and educational design. Neither
term can be read unproblematically. In this chapter, we take ‘content’ to mean
electronic information resources, which students may (or may not) use in their
work as learners. By ‘educational design’ we mean the set of processes entailed
in planning the creation of good learning tasks, good learning resources and the
conditions in which convivial learning communities may grow and prosper.
This perspective on design places learning, not content, at the centre of the
educational design problem space. It stresses the importance of the learner’s
activity —primarily their mental activity—in determining the success of a
learning episode. It also asserts the importance of the social and physical setting
as key influences on learning and its outcomes. To a greater or lesser extent,
learning is socially situated and recognition of this fact has drawn many towards
the idea of supporting learning activity within a community of learners (eg,
Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1994). Learning is also physically situated.
Technology of various kinds—books, notepaper, a laptop, the Web—can have a
strong influence on how learning and its associated cognitive activity take place,
to the extent that many are persuaded that it makes sense to think of cognition
being distributed across people and the artefacts around them (eg, Salomon,
1993). This invests the quality of the ‘learnplace’ with considerable importance
(Bliss et al, 1999; Ford et al, 1996). While the quality of the learners’ activity,
the support they obtain from a learning community and the nature of the
resources available to them in their learnplace are the three sets of factors most
influential in determining the success of learning, as educational designers we
rarely have direct access to them. As we have argued in detail elsewhere,
designers cannot (and probably should not) control the learner’s activity, create
learning communities or aim to specify in exhaustive detail the tools and
resources available in their learnplace (Goodyear, 2000). Rather, a more indirect
approach is needed—one in which design focuses attention on specifying
productive learning tasks, creating the organizational conditions for convivial
learning and stocking the wider learning environment with tools and resources that
the learners can customize and reconfigure to furnish their own personal
learnplace (cf Crook, 2001).
Where does content sit in this schema? On a broad view, it is distributed. It
can be found in the cognitions and utterances of peers. It emerges and is
transformed in the activity of the learner. But given the focus of this chapter and
this section of the book, we shall locate content in the space-place area of our
schema. That is, we shall treat content in terms of its reification in texts, tools
and other artefacts. We return to this in a moment.
Terry Mayes (eg, Mayes and Neilson, 1996) has developed a three-phase
model of students’ use of technology in higher education that invokes a cycle of
conceptualization, construction and critique. These phases are best supported by
what he calls primary, secondary and tertiary courseware. Tertiary courseware is
created by interactions among learners and teachers (discourse; critique).
Secondary courseware is customized by teachers to support the knowledge-
construction activities of their students. Primary courseware is created by teams
of teachers and/ or professional courseware producers and is intended for use by
students of many different institutions, for the initial ‘conceptualization’ kinds of
learning activity.
We can map these three kinds of courseware onto the space-place area of the
design schema. Think of ‘space’ as denoting an abstract and/or public field,
where common goods can be located. In contrast, place is concrete, personal and
local. Primary, secondary and tertiary courseware relate to space and place
through processes of transformation and relocation. Primary and secondary
courseware reside in the common/public space. Among the tasks we set students
are ones that encourage them to interact with primary and secondary courseware,
and in so doing to construct both internal and external personal representations
of knowledge. (By internal representations we mean various cognitive/
knowledge structures—mental models, propositions, etc. By external
representations we mean such things as personal notes, diagrams, etc.) Other
tasks we set students encourage them to create texts and other shareable
representations of knowledge, and to move these —when ready—from private to
public. For example, in electronic seminars we encourage students to create
electronic texts and, when ready, to post these in their seminar group’s online
discussion area. These processes of transformation and relocation underpin the
creation of what Mayes calls tertiary courseware.
In this chapter our main focus is on primary courseware, but we are especially
concerned about how the people designing and producing it conceive of its
integration with learning activity. Within the UK there have been four major
initiatives aimed at creating such primary resources—NDPCAL (the National
Development Programme for Computer Assisted Learning, in the 1970s), CTI
(the Computers in Teaching Initiative, in the 1980s), TLTP (the Teaching and
Learning Technology Programme, in the 1990s) and DNER (the Distributed
National Electronic Resource, now). The products of TLTP and their impact
upon UK higher education were the focus of substantial evaluation studies. A
IMPLICIT THEORIES OF LEARNING AND CHANGE 27
significant conclusion from these studies was that, in general, insufficient

attention was paid to pedagogy, design and the integration of courseware into the
mainstream curriculum. The implicit pedagogical beliefs of the courseware
production teams became embedded in the courseware and this, among other
things, restricted takeup of the courseware by teachers whose pedagogical beliefs
and practices were not compatible with those of the courseware producers.
DNER is taking a different tack. Like TLTP it is intent on producing and/or
improving access to primary resources but it is doing so with what appears to be
a much more open sense of possible pedagogical usage. Part of our job as the
people responsible for the formative evaluation of DNER is to try to surface the
implicit theories of learning and change that are informing, and are embedded in,
the work of the DNER project teams. Both the process and the outcome of our
work casts further light on important issues concerning students’ use of primary
courseware, especially in relation to presentational (teachers’ view) and
conceptualization (learners’ view) activities.
This chapter draws on the pedagogical evaluation of the DNER. More
specifically, it focuses on the work of some 35 projects, each of which is
concerned with contributing new digital information resources for learning and
teaching. This chapter presents an analysis of the ‘implicit theories of learning
and change’ that are embedded in the day-to-day work of the projects. We take
an implicit theory of learning to be an unarticulated set of assumptions about how
learning occurs (and, by extension, about how learning resources can best
support learning). Such assumptions can be a powerful influence on the nature of
the learning resources created by a project team. Similarly, an implicit theory of
change is an unarticulated set of assumptions about how the creation of new
learning resources is expected to change educational practice. Among these
assumptions, we can find expectations about the ways in which teachers in
higher education will seek to connect electronic information resources with the
rest of the e-learning environment, and beliefs about how discrete information
resources can be turned into reusable learning objects through appropriate
tagging with meta-data, for example.
Implicit theories of learning and change

In this section we report the outcomes of an analysis of brief project descriptions
produced by key members of the project teams. These project descriptions were
elicited as part of a ‘History of the future’ exercise, in which projects were asked
to focus on their intended core achievements. After this, we present some further
evidence to triangulate with our initial set of findings—this time drawn from the
projects’ published descriptions of themselves. Finally, we illustrate some of the
difficulties projects have in linking their activities to definable pedagogical
benefits, using the mechanism of ‘project logic maps’ to do so.
Main study
The study context

The DNER is:
a managed environment for accessing quality assured information

resources on the Internet which are available from many sources. These
resources include scholarly journals, monographs, textbooks, abstracts,
manuscripts, maps, music scores, still images, geospatial images and other
kinds of vector and numeric data, as well as moving picture and sound
collections. (DNER, 2001)
It is funded by the JISC—the Joint Information Systems Committee of the four

UK funding councils for higher education, with an investment to date of over
£30 million. The DNER is aimed at users in tertiary education in the UK, not just
for learning and teaching but also for research and scholarship. However, the
study reported in this chapter involved staff from some 35 projects that were
funded under a single call for proposals aimed at enhancing the educational use
of DNER. The original proposal formulated by JISC for additional government
funding captures some of the core intention:
Although this data has been primarily used for research purposes, it is
beginning to find a use in learning and teaching. However, this work has
been slow and some additional funding would enable the JISC services to
be used in totally different ways than originally envisaged. There is a
strong requirement to improve the interaction between the people who are
involved in the development of new learning environments and the
national information systems and services being developed by the JISC. It
is therefore proposed that an initiative be funded to integrate learning
environments with the wider information landscape aimed at increasing the
use of on-line electronic information and research datasets in the learning
and teaching process. (JISC, 1999, para 8)
Among the criteria to be used in selecting bids for funding was ‘impact on the
learning and teaching environment in UK HE’ (JISC, 1999, para 97).
Method
Our main data were collected during a two-day meeting of representatives of the
project teams in London in June 2001. All the project personnel were gathered
together in a single room and were asked to engage in a version of a ‘History of
the future’ exercise. One of the authors introduced this exercise by a) displaying
a large PowerPoint slide whose text is reproduced below, and b) by asking the
participants to spend 10 minutes drafting a response, without conferring. It was

emphasized that the responses should be anonymous, that only the authors and a
secretarial assistant would see the responses and that we would make no
comments about the work of individual projects. The participants hand wrote
their responses on paper and at the end of 10 minutes all the responses were
collected by the authors. After this, the authors made a presentation about the use
of ‘History of the future’ exercises and project logic mapping exercises in
helping bring to the surface what might otherwise be implicit assumptions,
beliefs, goals and causal attributions. The subsequent discussion session
suggested that at least those participants who spoke saw the point of the exercise
and regarded it as worthwhile. We saw no reason to assume that the participants
had done anything other than treat the exercise seriously.
The text shown on the slide (after Nash et al, 2000) was:
To facilitate this process for complex projects, we propose that the project
staff write a history of the future. Imagine that your intervention project is
completed and that it succeeded in all of its goals. You are to appear
tomorrow at a press conference to explain what you have accomplished.
Write a press release for distributing at this meeting, explaining in a few
paragraphs what it is that you have accomplished, who is benefiting from
this, why it’s important (that is, what problem it solves and why this
problem needed to be solved), and what it was that you did that led to or
caused this success.
The responses of the participants were typed into a single word-processor

document file by a secretarial assistant at Lancaster. An identification number
was added to each response and a page break inserted between responses. The
secretarial assistant, as far as possible, reproduced any layout features used in the
originals; paragraphs were preserved, etc.
Data
The data file contained 69 responses. The average length of response was 107
words. Inspection of the responses revealed none that was obviously flippant or
facetious and reinforced the view that participants had engaged in the exercise
with a reasonable degree of seriousness. It may be useful to give a flavour of the
responses at this point. Here are two examples, which we have modified very
slightly to make it impossible to identify the projects concerned. (Passages we
have changed for this purpose are marked with square brackets. Passages where
we have expanded acronyms are marked with round brackets.)
Response 40
What it has accomplished—Has made accessible 1,000 text or 3000

images of a collection of museum objects and archives from a museum
collection. Made by outstanding [artists…]
Will benefit—students of [various craft and design areas] and applied
arts in higher and further education.
It’s overcome—Problem faced by museums—objects have to be stored
away for their protection. Only x% seen at any one time—now several
thousands of such collections can be seen and used as a learning resource
for many students.
Response 48
The service has succeeded in making a positive impact with all the
relevant subject communities within F(urther) E(ducation), H(igher) E
(ducation).
The service is perceived to be
— a useful ‘first stop' or ‘trawl’ for general information

— a ‘spring board’ to more detailed sources
— a ‘signpost’ or evolving map for the community to help them find their
way around the subjects.
Students within further education are introduced to sources they do not

know existed. Users within HE are supported in their project and research
work.
Bridges have been built with the relevant professional bodies and the
service has acted as a successful ‘networker’—bringing together different
strands of the overall community that studies these subjects.
Analysis
Our first analysis of the data took the form of a classification of the responses
into categories, based upon the ways in which projects referred to what students
would do with the electronic resources that were being created and/or set in place
for them. Our principal distinction was based upon the idea of ‘access’. That is,
we started by dividing the responses into a) those that only talked about making
new or better resources accessible to students or about improving their access to
such resources, and b) those which, in some way, went ‘beyond access'.
Table 2.1 summarizes the results.
Less than half of the responses said anything that went ‘beyond access’. That
is, the majority of the project staff restricted their comments to the description of
project outcomes that were concerned with improving students’ access to
electronic information resources and/or enriching such resources.The nature of
this category becomes clearer if we turn to what else they might have said. For
Table 2.1 First level summary of the classification of responses
example, there are good reasons to believe that simply making resources
available to students will have no impact on the quality of their learning.
Students in higher education will need a reason to use such resources, and to use
them well. When resource use is integrated with learning tasks prescribed or
suggested by teachers then there is a greater probability that students will use
them. If the outcomes of the students’ work on such tasks are assessed and the
assessment counts towards the students’ degree results, then there is an even
higher probability that they will make use of the resources concerned. If the
assessment criteria can distinguish between outcomes that are the consequence
of poor, satisfactory and excellent use of such resources, then there is an
increased probability that students will not just use the resources but use them
well. So what might project team staff be expected to say that goes ‘beyond
access’?
Table 2.1 reveals three such categories of response. Some of the responses did
talk about ways in which students might use electronic information resources in
their learning. That is, they gave some kind of description of possible learning
activities. But only 20 per cent of the responses fall into this category. In 80 per
cent of the cases, there was no description of intended or envisaged student
learning activity. Another way of ‘going beyond access’ would be if project staff
mentioned that their goals included providing learner and/or teacher support
materials to help with the integration of an electronic information resource into
the curriculum; 25 per cent of the responses did this. The third and final category
that goes ‘beyond access’ includes all of those projects that mentioned that they
had been working with teachers in developing their electronic information
resources; 7 per cent of the responses mentioned they had been working with
teachers (or intended to do so). This figure may well under-report the proportion
of projects that had worked, or were planning to work, with teachers. The reason
is that the ‘History of the future’ exercise causes respondents to start with project
goals and move on to project methods. Inspection of the projects’ published

descriptions of themselves (see below) reveals that more of them mention
working with teachers. The point to emphasize here is that for 93 per cent of the
project staff, working with teachers (eg to make sure the resources being
produced would be usable in real learning and teaching situations) was not a
sufficiently salient issue to figure in their responses to this exercise.
The final point to be made with the aid of Table 2.1 is that the intersection of
these three sets of responses that go ‘beyond access’ is very small indeed. Only 3
per cent of the responses fall into this category. This equates to just two of the 69
respondents and probably represents the work of just one of the projects.
Analysis of the published descriptions of the projects

The previous analysis draws on data collected directly from staff of the projects
in response to a particular stimulus. Their responses were produced under tight
time constraints and were anonymous. We decided that it would be valuable to
triangulate the outcomes from our analysis of these responses with an analysis of
some of the core assumptions contained within the projects’ published
descriptions of themselves. The dataset here consists of a set of A4 publicity
sheets—one for each project—produced by the projects themselves, but working
to a template provided by the programme coordinators. These sheets are used
individually by the projects but are also used as a set for publicity and
dissemination purposes at the programme level. Table 2.2 reports the outcomes of
our analysis of these published project self-descriptions.
Looking at this table, we can see that only two of the projects provide more
than a rudimentary account of how students’ learning will improve through use of
project outcomes; these are in categories 5 and 6 in Table 2.2. Perhaps we (the
authors) are accustomed to seeing educational technology project rationales
rooted in an explicit account of student learning and/or drawing directly on
theories about how students learn and how their interaction with electronic
resources can be expected to improve aspects of their learning. We should not
assume that projects funded under an initiative concerned with making electronic
information resources more useful to learning and teaching in UK tertiary
education will necessarily be motivated to construct or publish a pedagogical
rationale. Instead, we merely observe a) that very few of these projects have
done so, and b) that the lack of an explicit pedagogical rationale may make it
harder for projects to convey the potential educational value of their work, which
may in turn make it harder for others (especially teachers in HE) to recognize,
evaluate, take up and integrate the project outcomes into their own work as
educators.
If we move above the bold line marking off categories 5 and 6, we find a
number of contrasting and usually implicit assumptions apparently motivating
the work of numbers of projects. Some project descriptions indicate a clear
commitment to research (category 4: five projects). The underlying claim here is
that so little is known about the educational use of new media that development
work needs to have a strong research component to it. None of these projects is
funded as a research project. Rather, they have been funded to engage in
development activity into which they have built a research component.
Categories 1 and 2 differ in the following way. Category 1 represents projects
that are concerned with the digitization of existing material resources. In
contrast, our category 2 projects are concerned with making existing electronic
information resources easier to use within teaching and learning practices in UK
tertiary education. The main perceived barriers to easier and/or wider and/or
more productive usage give us the five main sub-categories in category 2. They
vary from a belief that teachers find existing resources hard to locate (or are
ignorant of their existence) to the provision of advice about ways of using the
resources. Ten of the projects fall into this last sub-category.
Table 2.2 (Usually) implicit assumptions about pedagogical purpose
Around one-third of the projects, according to their published descriptions, are

committed to producing learning and teaching materials. This compares with the
figure of 25 per cent of responses reported in Table 2.1. This difference of just
one or two projects can probably be accounted for in terms of the relative
salience of producing learning and teaching materials, compared with other
project goals, and the effect of the time constraints in the ‘History of the future’
exercise in causing respondents to restrict themselves to what they perceived as
the most important outcomes of their work.
The internal logic of projects

The data discussed thus far tell us something about the ‘outcomes of interest’ of
the projects and about their methods, including something about their
assumptions concerning how their activities may connect with improvements in
teaching and learning. A useful tool for exploring this further is the ‘project logic
map’ (McClauglin and Jordan, 1998; Nash et al, 2000). Figure 2.1 gives an
example of an internal logic map for projects in this area.
The logic map is read as follows. At the right-hand side we see the main
‘outcome(s) of interest’. These are the main kinds of things that are meant to
emerge in the ‘History of the future’ exercise. They capture what the project is
meant to achieve—what difference it will make in the world. On the left-hand
side are the project team’s initial resources—what they have to hand in
embarking on the project. In between are the entities that the team needs to
create or otherwise set in place in executing its work. The arrows linking the
main entities encapsulate the team’s sense (its implicit theory) of causation. For
example, placing a link between ‘well-designed learning tasks’ and ‘constructive
alignment of tasks and assessment’ implies that it is not enough to design good
tasks: they must also be aligned with course assessment requirements. Team
members’ beliefs about the nature of this link can be probed through discussion,
for example to reveal beliefs that what students in UK higher education choose to
do is in part a satisficing response to the course assessment demands placed upon
them (Biggs, 1999).
The logic map has been divided into two parts. The lower part (below the thick
horizontal line) is absent from many of the projects in the set with which we are
concerned—whether one creates a logic map from their published documentation
or begins to sketch one from the data in the ‘History of the future’ exercise. The
upper part is present in most projects. The goal of improved student achievement is
at least implicit in most projects, though causal links with project inputs and
goals are absent or not apparent.
Part of our task in providing the formative pedagogical evaluation of the
DNER is to help project teams articulate and then enrich their project logic
maps. Part of the intention is to help them move towards methods of making
content available that stand a good chance of allowing integration with students’
learning activity. Though the maps provide a useful resource for internal
Figure 2.1 Project logic map
discussion, their main value lies in their capacity for supporting action. Assessing
this capacity is an important task for the next stage of our work.
Implications for the development of e-learning

environments for higher education
What can this specific evaluation experience tell us that may be useful in a more
general consideration of e-learning in higher education?
First, we would argue that research of this kind helps to fill in some of the
details that are glossed over in arguments about ‘technology-led’ and
‘pedagogically-led’ development projects. In the case of DNER, many of the
projects are driven by beliefs about the value of improved access to electronic
content. Access is primarily conceived in technical terms: it is addressed in terms
of ‘cross-searching’, ‘fusion services’ and ‘interoperability’, for example. Access
is not linked, conceptually, with pedagogically-informed beliefs about students’
learning activities. There is no clear view of how learning activity and
information resource (content) are meant to relate. Such a lacuna is startling to

people brought up in a tradition of instructional systems design (ISD), where
definition of learning goals and learning activities would precede and inform
selection of content. In the absence of an ISD perspective, content is conjured up
on the assumption that somehow it may prove useful. The design and
development of complex e-learning environments, especially in areas like higher
education where some degree of autonomous learning is valued, can no longer
depend wholly on the ISD tradition. But neither can it rely solely on vague
intuitions about the potential utility of content. Rather, those developing primary
courseware need to structure their work by taking the kind of holistic or
ecological approach to design implied in the discussion above (see also
Goodyear, 2000).
Second, formative evaluation work of this kind underlines the value of causing
development teams to articulate, confront, critique and improve the assumptions
embodied in their activity—especially with respect to their beliefs about learning
and educational change. Project staff, especially if they come from more
technical areas, rarely have a sharp and robust set of conceptual tools for
thinking about and discussing learning. Vernacular constructs about learning are
not adequate for the job.
Finally—though there may be other lessons to share—we would want to argue
that programmatic funding of the development of technological support for
learning needs to be informed by the best of what is known about ‘good
learning’. The staff of individual projects cannot be blamed for silence or
ambivalence with respect to learning if the programme within which their work
is commissioned and managed is similarly silent or ambivalent. Given the
uncertain and contested status of much educational knowledge, this necessitates
some risk-taking, courage and personal commitment. Nevertheless a programme
of development work which starts with a manifesto about good learning (and
how it may be supported by good technology) stands a better chance than one in
which such fundamental beliefs remain tacit and unexamined.
Acknowledgement
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of JISC in carrying out the
evaluation work on which this chapter is based. It should not be assumed that
JISC, its committees or its staff share the views we have put forward here, nor
that they are shared by other members of the DNER evaluation team.
References
Biggs, J (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the student does, Open
University Press, Buckingham
Bliss, J, Saljo, R and Light, P (eds) (1999) Learning Sites: Social and technological
resources for learning, Elsevier, Oxford
Crook, C (2001) The campus experience of networked learning, in Networked Learning:
Perspectives and issues, eds C Steeples and C Jones, pp 293–308, Springer, London
DNER (2001) JISC Distributed National Electronic Resource. Accessed 11 December
2001, from www.jisc.ac.uk/dner
Ford, P, Goodyear, P, Heseltine, R, Lewis, R, Darby, J, Graves, J, Sartorius, P , Harwood,
D and King, T (1996) Managing Change in Higher Education: A learning
environment architecture, Open University Press, Buckingham
Goodyear, P (2000) Environments for lifelong learning: ergonomics, architecture and
educational design, in Integrated and Holistic Perspectives on Learning, Instruction
and Technology: Understanding complexity, eds J M Spector and T Anderson, pp 1–
18 , Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht
JISC (1999) Developing the DNER for Learning and Teaching, JISC Circular 5/ 99.
Accessed 11 December 2001, from http://wwwjiscacuk/pub99/c05_99html
Mayes, T and Neilson, I (1996) Learning from other people’s dialogues: questions about
computer-based answers, in Innovative Learning with Innovative Technology, eds B
Collis and G Davies, North Holland, Amsterdam
McClauglin, J and Jordan, G (1998) Logic models: a tool for telling your program's
performance story. Accessed 5 June 2001, from http://wwwpmnnet/education/
Logichtm
Nash, J, Plugge, L and Eurelings, A (2000) Defining and evaluating CSCL projects:
managing towards evaluation. Paper presented at the European Conference on
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (ECSCL 2000), Maastricht,
Netherlands
Salomon, G (ed) (1993) Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and educational
considerations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Scardamalia, M and Bereiter, C (1994) Computer support for knowledge building
communities, Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3 (3), pp 265–83
Chapter 3
Designing graphical, interactive simulations
to model scientific problem solving
Laurie Ruberg and John Baro
Introduction
How do scientists solve problems? How does their thinking differ from that of
non-scientists facing a problem? By using ideas as generative models for
interpreting observations and events, scientists and other experts see meaningful
patterns in problems regardless of the subject matter (Bransford et al, 2000).
Besides being a body of epistemological ideas and facts, science is a way of
perceiving and interpreting experiences and natural phenomena. Thus, learning
the process of scientific problem solving has value to all and applies to any field.
A goal in the USA and in many other countries is to educate all citizens to
achieve a scientifically literate society (National Research Council, 1996).
In this chapter we examine how graphical, interactive simulations in a
strategically designed learning environment can be used to model scientific
problem solving and promote scientific inquiry. To achieve these goals, a set of
design principles was applied. They combined components of problem-based
learning pedagogy, cognitive psychology research, and empirical evidence from
media research. The design strategy began with a compelling problem that
allowed students to take diverse positions and then moved students into a rich,
graphical, computer-based learning environment for a series of guided, interactive
experiences.
This chapter uses specific examples from a multimedia program called
BioBLAST®. It offers a six-week high school biology curriculum. A select group
of teacher-leaders, practising scientists and a curriculum development team
collaborated on the design and development of this program. In the examples
provided, students were given complex problem-solving experiences within a
learning environment that gradually progresses from simple to more complex
cognitive processing and interactions. Each interactive event was designed to
move students forward with advanced simulation activities offering increasingly
more open inquiry experiences. The chapter concludes with a set of design
principles to apply to the development of future computer-based simulations.
DESIGNING GRAPHICAL, INTERACTIVE SIMULATIONS 39
Theoretical background
With the goal of promoting scientific inquiry, the design team viewed learners as
‘model-builders’ and provided them with tools they could use to create models
of an idealized world that could be inspected, evaluated, reflected upon and
publicly discussed. This approach to simulation design included a three-step
process. First, identify a suitable problem. Second, present the problem-solving
task in a way that learners can handle the content and cognitive processing and
can effectively mediate their emerging solutions. Third, present the problem,
tools and resources in a way that promotes questioning, discussion, analysis and
reflection on core scientific principles. This section provides a summary of the
theoretical framework that guided each of these three steps.
Problem-based learning
Having a compelling problem-solving framework that stimulates student interest
allows students to see where they are headed and why. It also encourages them to
take diverse perspectives on critical issues. The need to begin with problems that
are real and meaningful to students is evident across educational research
theories (Germann et al, 1996; Hofer and Pintrich, 1997; Kuhn, 1997). Learning
is a goal-oriented activity. Students need a compelling problem to solve.
The problem posed in the instructional system in this research is how to design
a biologically based life support system that could support humans in space for
long periods of time without resupply. The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) was actively researching this problem when this
program was created. Because of the problem’s complex nature, many diverse
solutions could be proposed.
Both teachers and students need to know that the problem scenario and
simulation models were based on data from authentic research studies. As
Brown et al (1989) suggest, the problem posed must be applied in an authentic
context. Kuhn (1997) reinforces this point when she suggests that students
should have a chance to experience the big picture through different media and
interactive events that frame the problem in a dramatic, narrative and engaging
context. The teacher who introduces the simulation can also draw on relevant
news items or classroom events to set up the problem’s framework.
Designing cognitive guideposts

Ideas are carriers of meaning (Bransford et al, 2000). In this context all inquiry
processes, interactions, and activities are designed to reinforce the underlying
theme: the interrelatedness of all living things. The challenge for science
education designers is to create model-building tools that allow students to think
with critical components and discuss physical attributes with their peers. The
design strategy was to develop instructional events organized around core
concepts, or big ideas, to model how experts organize information and solve
problems. The level of complexity of the models was designed to suit learner
level of knowledge and skill. In the examples cited, the simulation experiences
explicitly reinforce the concept that photosynthesis and respiration are reciprocal
processes. Students create models of living systems that they then systematically
interact with, test and analyse using simulation tools.
Studies comparing cognitive strategies of experts with novices (Bransford et
al, 2000) were used to design the sequence of interactive simulation experiences.
Experts’ abilities to reason and solve problems depend on well-organized
knowledge that affects what they notice and how they represent problems,
whereas novices’ knowledge is much less organized around key ideas and is
more fragmentary in structure. Experts recognize meaningful patterns of
information across all domains. Pattern recognition is an important strategy for
helping students develop competence and confidence in problem solving. The
exercises designed to model effective use of the simulators were designed to
reinforce observation of patterns and relationships. Recognition of these patterns
provides triggering conditions for accessing knowledge relevant to any problem.
The simulation activities were designed to support the shift in focus from
generalities to in-depth analysis and testing of core components of the problem.
Student activities were structured so that students would use three component
simulations to produce relevant data that would later be integrated and applied to
developing a testable solution to the overall problem. A primary goal was to
provide a strong core theme that unites a variety of disciplines, including
mathematics, technology education, chemistry, psychology and sociology with
the biological sciences. The content taxonomy had to consider not only the
fundamental biological principles to be addressed, but also related principles and
knowledge from other disciplines that were required for problem-solving tasks.
Therefore, the presentation of inquiry experiences for students had to consider
what level of knowledge of core concepts students should be expected to know
and could be expected to learn from the experiences presented to them in this
software (Matthews, 2000).
Scientific reasoning and inquiry

Analysing the common features between student and scientific problem solving
can help researchers and instructional designers understand where students need
help in making the transition from ordinary response to application of scientific
inquiry Professional scientists conduct their research by building and testing
models (Penner, 2001). Among practising scientists, model building and testing
are essential to the development of theory. Scientists use theoretical models of
processes and concepts they are investigating to organize their observations and
frame their interpretations of what they have tested and observed. According to
Germann et al (1996) as well as Jacobson et al (1996), explicit, incremental
development of the science process skills of formulating hypotheses and
identifying variables when linked with model examples might facilitate student
success in teaching inquiry skills, such as the ability to design science experiments.
Tools such as computer simulations that allow scientists to represent and test
their understanding of natural phenomena are also useful. They engage students
in using models to construct and test their conceptual understanding. As Park and
Hannafin (1993) suggest, a learning environment designed to support scientific
reasoning and inquiry integrates student learning experiences and interactive
activities in a way that allows learners to control their experiences and
movement within the computer interface. In the long run, inquiry instruction will
result in students who are reflective, self-regulating investigators. They will be
able to defend their questions, procedures and conclusions and will see inquiry as
a way of knowing the world (National Research Council, 1996). To achieve this
goal, students need opportunities to do their own background research, interpret
information and share their opinions with others as part of the inquiry process.
The instructional context was designed to begin and end with students working
in cooperative teams outside the software interface. By giving users access to
view, export and examine the simulation data as well as graphical and numeric
description of data relationships, the simulations are much more than conceptual
models that demonstrate reciprocal relationships among plants, humans and
recycling systems. With access to the underlying data and dynamic calculation
model, students can inspect, question, discuss, critique and redefine the
underlying model through their own design ideas, test runs and data analysis.
Examples of successful simulation designs

This section uses specific examples from simulations that were designed based
on the principles in the previous section. The examples are part of a multimedia
program called BioBLAST®. It integrates the three-tiered design process into the
development of a learning environment for high school biology students. The
final software reflects the socially-mediated interpretation of what was an
appropriate problem to pose, cognitive support to interject, and level of reasoning
to require. Figure 3.1 shows screenshots of the virtual reality interface (A),
background research simulators (B), introductory game (C), and culminating
integrated modelling system (D).
Examples of problem-based learning

The BioBLAST approach to problem-based learning starts with an authentic,
compelling problem for students to solve. Students are placed in a virtual lunar
base and must design a bioregenerative life support system that will keep their
crew of six alive for three years without resupply. The context is authentic
because at the time BioBLAST was developed, researchers were trying to solve
that very problem. The lunar base design is realistic, based on current and
projected future technologies. The simulations are also as realistic as possible,
Figure 3.1 These screens illustrate the BioBLAST interface

Note: Panel A is part of the virtual reality lunar base interface. Panel B is an output screen
showing data during a Plant Production Simulator run. Panel C is from the introductory
arcade-style game. Panel D is the main interface of the BaBS Simulator.
based on data from a number of current research projects at NASA centres. To

make the data useful in a classroom setting, the system was simplified
somewhat. An attractive, easy-to-use graphical interface was implemented.
Before students begin the computer-based portion of BioBLAST, they
complete a number of discussions or thought problems. These jump-start the
exploration by asking students to consider issues such as: How much food and
water will they require? How much room will they need to live comfortably?
How far away is the Moon, and what would it cost to get there? These activities
familiarize students with the overarching problem and the kinds of questions they
will address. The opening activities encourage group discussions of qualitative
components of the overall problem. The open-ended explorations and journal
writing activities encourage students to consider diverse approaches to the
problem and to be aware of the breadth of issues and need for collaboration and
sharing of ideas regarding possible solutions.
The first computer-based activities focus on orientation, both to the problem
scenario and to the software. The launch sequence places students on a virtual
ship to the Moon, where they receive the first formal statement of their mission
objective. Through a series of videos and introductory readings, students learn
their goal and the means to achieve it. Also included in this sequence is an
arcade-style video game that introduces a number of important concepts relevant
to living in and balancing a closed system. They also take a guided tour of the
virtual lunar base.
Examples of designing cognitive guideposts

BioBLAST follows a whole-to-part-to-whole approach to problem-based
learning. Students initially learn their ultimate goal, the design of a
bioregenerative life support system. During orientation, they explore concepts
necessary to accomplish this goal, such as the interrelatedness of all living things
and, in particular, the reciprocal relationship between photosynthesis and
respiration. During the research phase, the problem is broken down into
components. Through simulation and laboratory experiments students test and
analyse specific aspects of the system, such as the relationship between plant
growth and atmospheric carbon dioxide level. In the mission phase, they
integrate the results they obtained in their research to design a complete life
support system. In the reporting phase they share their results, using PowerPoint®
slides that include supporting data tables and graphs.
Initial prototypes of the program did not include the three component
simulations. From an early ‘proof of concept’ for the software, students moved
from the introduction to the overall problem to a structured presentation with
accompanying exercises that introduced the problem-solving process. The
structured exercises guided students through identifying, gathering and collecting
the data they would need to create their model solution. The quantitative data
collected from the exercises would then be used as simulation settings to be
tested in the model-building simulator called BaBS.
The BaBS simulator is considered the ‘capstone’ event for the whole program.
It is the primary source from which students evaluate the success of their design.
Once the proof of concept for this simulator was tested and refined into a
working prototype, the design team turned its focus back to creating the three
component simulations. These simulations had to be carefully designed so that
students could use what they learnt from the hands-on lab activities as well as
their prior knowledge of photosynthesis and respiration to reason about the new
problem context. This design approach was guided by the constructivist view of
learning as a process of knowledge refinement and reorganization, not
replacement (Schoenfeld, 1992).
The three component simulations are used primarily during the research
phase. Guided activities introduce students to the simulations and the
experimental procedures they model. These activities outline a number of
experimental manipulations. The guided experiments provide students with a
theoretical model and empirical data upon which to base future investigations.
Students observe patterns and relationships they could use as the basis for more
experiments. Additional exploration in the simulations is encouraged by
providing a large number of simulation parameters beyond those outlined in the
guided activities that could be set. Figure 3.2 provides a screen shot from one of
Figure 3.2 This input screen from the Plant Production Simulator shows several
parameters that affect plant growth
the component simulators. It allows students to focus on one aspect of the

conceptual model and one part of the biological life support processes—in this
case, biomass production. The sequence of simulation exercises was designed to
give students repeated practice using the simulators to complete problem-solving
tasks. In these exercises students were required to look for patterns, relationships
and underlying models they could use to explain the results of their test runs. At
first, students interacted with the simulators via guided instructional exercises.
Later, students used the simulators on their own to assess the outcomes of their
hypothetical designs. This permitted students to focus on a particular part of the
system without concern for the large number of interactions inherent in the
complete system.
The BaBS simulator combines the components into a full-scale system. By the
time students start the BaBS simulation, they are expected to have had
experience with the component simulators and to be familiar with the concepts
illustrated. Students must be able to apply the data and strategies they’ve already
acquired to set up a complete bioregenerative life support system. The BaBS
simulation is more open-ended than the component simulations. Unlike the
component simulations, no step-by-step guidelines are provided. Instead,
students start with a descriptive overview of the six categories of input
parameters that can be set (crew, crops, resource recycling, storage items, energy
systems and food processing mechanisms).
The students’ goal—design and test a model for a bioregenerative life support
system that will keep a crew of six alive for at least three years without resupply
— has thousands of possible solutions. In effect, students are generating their own
unique data set each time they run the simulation, rather than relying on ‘canned’
data that are always the same. Further, each unsuccessful run requires an analysis
of the output in order to modify the system parameters to reduce or eliminate
previous problems in future designs. Simulation results can be exported to
spreadsheet-format files for further data analysis and graphing with an
application such as Excel™.
Examples of scientific reasoning and inquiry

The interface design starts students with a simple, arcade-style interactive game.
They move to hypotheses-based, structured, simulator-based investigations and
then to a model-building simulator that requires them to fit their ideas into an
authentically designed, physically limited prototype system. Throughout this
sequence, students have access to additional software tools, Internet-based
resources and hands-on lab experiences.The ‘research journal’, a resource
integrated into the software interface (shown in Figure 3.3) includes assignments
that ask the students to reflect on what they have done and to visually
conceptualize the relationships between living systems they have explored. From
the virtual launch to return home, students have access to virtual mentors, library
resources, a glossary and a research journal. In addition, they always have access
to the simulators, which lets them test alternative model settings or compare
output between the BaBS modelling system and component system settings.
The goal was to design software tools, interface design techniques and
resources to give students repeated and diverse opportunities for guided practice
with scientific inquiry experiences. The introductory experiences with the
software allow students to interact with diverse media resources so that they
experience the big picture of the overarching problem. Once students complete
the research and mission phases, they use the resources and tools provided by the
software interface to export data, graphics, observations and background research
material. They then construct their final reports. In these they reflect on the
models they designed and compile the results of the testing of their designs. They
can export all their simulation settings and results from the research journal or
directly from the simulators. The simulation set-up and results files can be
imported into Excel™ or another spreadsheet program for review, analysis and
graphing for presentation in the final report.
Refinements to design based on field testing
Refinement to problem-based learning

Teachers reported that students were interested in designing a biological life
support system for a crew in space, but their interest greatly increased when they
were using the BaBS simulator. Some teachers asked the design team whether
there was a way to get the students to the model-building simulator without
having to work through all the component simulator exercises. One software
solution to this ‘time crunch’ problem was to design four ‘samplers’, which
provide an abbreviated exploratory, research and model-building experience.
Each of the four samplers has a content theme (plants, humans, resource
recycling and integrated system) and is designed to be completed by students
within five 40–minute class periods.
Figure 3.3 The online research journal is a tool students use to guide and record their
progress
Refinement to designing cognitive guideposts

Teachers wanted the software to guide students more when they first started
working through it. In response, the designers created a Launch Sequence that
directs students through an introductory sequence of software experiences and
that can be completed within a 40–minute class period.
Based on teachers’ desire to guide students as they worked through the
simulations, a discussion board was created for teachers. The ‘whiteboard’
is modelled after the message board scientists were using at NASA research
centres to give short message updates across teams regarding the status of system
tests. It gave teachers a similar capability to call attention to events or
assignments (by group or by class). One teacher used the message board to
communicate all assignments to her students. This feature functioned similarly to
the research journal (shown in Figure 3.3) but was password protected so that the
teacher could maintain control of what, to whom and when messages were
posted.
The following adjustments were made to the simulator interface based on both
observations of students using the simulators and suggestions from teachers who
helped field-test the software with their classes:
• Students wanted more detailed text descriptions of failures that occurred with
the BaBS modelling system. Additional information was provided that
included tips for interpreting parameter settings.
• Teachers requested dynamically generated graphs in the component
simulators so that students could see the data represented in line graphs as
well as summary tables. In addition, the presentation format of the component

simulator exercises was modified to match the hands-on laboratory activities
so that students would easily see the connection between the hands-on labs
and data output from the simulators.
• Teachers reported that students did not know how to use the research journal
and that the teachers did not have time to individually address this problem.
The beta and final versions of the program include sample journal entries as
illustrated in Figure 3.3. Students could then see how other students used the
journal and how observations could be summarized as journal entries.
Refinement to scientific reasoning and inquiry

From proof of concept to final published version, much time was spent
modifying the presentation of exercises, guides and assignments to keep them
manageable and doable within the school time frame. The more structured
simulation exercises presented with the component simulations were trimmed so
that they could be completed within a class period. Observation of classes using
the program demonstrated across schools that a few students would master the
introductory run almost straight away while other groups required all three class
sessions to complete the basic criteria for success. Therefore, the guidelines and
suggestions for running the modelling system were divided into two parts: a
basic design, test and run procedure and an ‘optimized run’ procedure for more
advanced students.
Summary and recommendations for future research

The virtual reality presentation of a problem scenario provided a way to support
student inquiry through a process of whole-to-part-to-whole problem solving.
The inquiry experiences offered via the simulation exercises guided students
through ordered epistemological tasks to increasingly complex applications of
the core scientific concepts. The structured exercises that accompanied the
simulators moved students through interactive models of expert problem-solving
strategies. Student experiences with the final model design and testing system
required them to apply what they learnt from the component simulations and
journal activities. Thus, the designers conclude that graphical, interactive
simulations within the context of a carefully designed learning environment can
be used to model scientific problem solving and promote scientific inquiry. We
have three suggestions for future simulation designs.
First, incorporate use of dynamic assessment—a procedure that determines
whether substantive changes occur in examinee behaviour if feedback is
provided. This could help teachers and instructional systems developers better
understand the learning potential of model-building programs. Using dynamic
assessment exercises across networked learning environments offers increased
opportunities for instructional designers and classroom teachers to gauge how
students are progressing as they work in cooperative teams to complete a

multitask challenge. The network assessment tools can also help students get
some measure of how they are progressing in comparison with teacher
expectations. This technique, according to Swanson and Lussier (2001),
especially helps under-achieving learners.
Second, incorporate network e-learning tools. This offers potential for giving
students some exposure to presenting their findings within a community of
apprenticing scientists. Children and adults enjoy comparing and competing in
networked games in which they can compare scores. The simulated model-
building software also offers areas for sharing and comparing outcomes without
giving away complete solutions. Adding a network-based ‘scoreboard’ in which
students compare components of their design solutions would increase student
competition and would motivate some gaming experts to get involved.
Third, for greater use of network learning environments, build electronic
connections between teachers, both for professional development and for
comparison of results using different teaching strategies (Cain, 1999).
Throughout the development of software programs, teachers’ input is crucial for
design development and testing. Teachers also need continued opportunities to
communicate with other teachers using the software and to be able to give
feedback to the development team as new issues arise. Having an easy-to-use
network discussion system would help new teachers as they implement a
program for the first time and would also provide a dynamic documentation
system for providing ongoing support for professional development, system
support and system upgrades.
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and sense making in mathematics, in Handbook of Research on Mathematics
Teaching and Learning, ed D A Grouws, pp 334–70, Macmillan, New York
Swanson, H L and Lussier, C M (2001) A selective synthesis of the experimental
literature on dynamic assessment, Review of Educational Research, 71 (21), pp 321–
63
Chapter 4
Optimizing domain knowledge
representation with multimedia objects
Kinshuk and Ashok Patel
Introduction
The success of the learning process in an educational system depends on how the
system presents the domain knowledge to the learner and changes its
presentation in terms of complexity and granularity according to learners’
progress. Tutoring strategies are the major source of taking decisions regarding
domain knowledge presentation. A set of effective and efficient tutoring
strategies leads to the creation of educational frameworks.
The need for suitable educational frameworks in the use of multimedia
technology in educational systems has been emphasized by many researchers.
Educational software is expected to be not only a teaching and learning resource,
but also a carrier of the instructional strategies (Adams et al, 1996). Therefore,
the design of such a system and its presentation should consider learning theories
and concepts, the pedagogies that apply to those concepts, and how they impact
instructional design and practice. A large number of multimedia-based
educational systems in current existence have placed too much emphasis on the
affective and psychomotor aspects and lured the learner by using spectacular
effects provided by images, animations, video and sound (Pham, 1997). In such
systems, the emphasis has shifted from adequate learning outcomes and
cognitive development, and the goal of knowledge acquisition seems to have
diluted. It should not be assumed that simply adding a visual or audio component
will enhance learning (Ellis, 2001).
Multimedia technology can contribute to the success of learning only if it can
adequately represent the tasks and concepts of the domain knowledge. The
Multiple Representation (MR) approach, presented in this chapter, is
predominantly dependent on the framework of tutoring strategies in which it is
being applied. This research work is focused on task-oriented disciplines where
the major requirement is the acquisition of cognitive skills. The next section
discusses the application of multimedia technology in cognitive skills acquisition
and proceeds to discuss the implementation of MR approach under a Cognitive
Apprenticeship framework.
OPTIMIZING DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION 51
Multimedia and cognitive skills

The use of multimedia objects such as pictures, animations and simulations in
educational systems can enhance the efficacy of the system to present domain
knowledge or domain competence. Various multimedia objects may facilitate
various requirements of different learning tasks. However, just collecting and
integrating multimedia objects in a system does not guarantee adequate learning
(Rogers et al, 1995).
In the area of cognitive skills, the use of various multimedia objects in a suitable
educational framework may satisfy different learning needs, which arise at
different stages of cognitive skills acquisition. The Cognitive Apprenticeship
framework (Collins et al, 1989) provides one such effective path. According to
the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework:
• learners can study task-solving patterns of experts to develop their own

cognitive model of the domain, ie about the tasks, tools and solutions
(modelling);
• learners can solve tasks on their own by consulting a tutorial component
(coaching);
• tutoring activity of the system is gradually reduced with the learners’
improving performances and problem solving (fading).
Various tasks and stages of the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework have

different requirements from a learning point of view and consequently they need
different multimedia objects for learners’ interaction with the domain content.
Multimedia objects and the Cognitive Apprenticeship

framework
The first step in Cognitive Apprenticeship is the observation phase, where the
learner observes the task pattern of an expert. Within a system, realization of
receptive exploration is possible through reading of text, observing a picture,
watching a video or animation (Payne et al, 1992), and listening to audio clips.
Once the learner has basic understanding and is motivated for further complex
observations, the system can provide the opportunity through image maps,
interactive videos and pictorial virtual reality (VR) scenarios, where the learner
actively engages in the observation process.
After the observation phase, the learner is required to imitate the observed
tasks to get skills. Simulations and interactive flowcharts can provide an adaptive
environment where learners can imitate the tasks under a system’s expert
guidance.
Table 4.1 presents examples of multimedia objects suitable for different tasks
under Cognitive Apprenticeship framework. The list in the table is not
exhaustive.
Table 4.1 Tasks in cognitive skills acquisition and related multimedia objects
Given the variety of multimedia objects available for various tasks, it is not
easy to select adequate objects in a particular context. A task becomes even more
difficult when there is a need to integrate various objects for domain
representation, or the objects are required to act as navigational aids within the
system. The MR approach provides guidelines for manipulation of multimedia
objects and ensures that the domain representation confirms the educational
perspective of the system and facilitates adequate learning.
The MR approach
The MR approach tackles the presentation of domain content in three ways:
multimedia objects selection; navigational objects selection; and integration of
multimedia objects.
Multimedia objects selection

The MR approach facilitates the presentation of domain content to the learner
with suitable multimedia objects as and when required according to the learner’s
current level of domain competence. Various recommendations are described
below.
Task specificity and learner’s competence

According to the MR approach, the selection of multimedia objects should be
based on the tasks to be carried out. Different multimedia objects are suitable for
fulfilling different purposes and tasks. For example, audio is good for stimulating
imagination, video clips for providing action information, text for conveying
details, whereas diagrams are good for conveying ideas (Alty, 1991). The
selection of objects should also consider the level of the learner’s domain
competence in the current situation. For this purpose, the curriculum should
follow a granular structure so that the measurement of competence level and
allotment of tasks should be carried out on individual units (Adams et al, 1996).
For example, an abstract concept could be introduced with the help of an
animation of a concrete instance of the concept (Rogers and Scaife, 1997). This
would facilitate a reduction in cognitive load on the novice learner. Later on, at a
higher level of abstraction, the representations could be more complex requiring

more cognitive processing.
Expectations
The selection of multimedia objects should take into account the expectations of
the learner and the domain knowledge. For example, a learner who is looking for
an overview of middle ear structure may expect to see just a graphic
representation, but from the subject matter domain’s point of view, textual
details are also necessary to emphasize some intricate details. The system, in that
case, should try to present graphical representation along with intricate textual
details.
Reference and revisits of already learnt domain content

In the process of learning it is necessary and desirable to refer to already learnt
domain content in different contexts. Spiro et al (1991) claimed that ‘revisiting
the same material, at different times, in re-arranged contexts, for different
purposes, and from different conceptual perspectives is essential for attaining the
goals of advanced knowledge acquisition’. The MR approach favours revisiting
the same domain content in different contexts. The multimedia objects used in
each case depend on the context although, if possible, the use of similar
multimedia objects is favoured since it puts less cognitive overload on the user.
Reference to previously learnt material provides the following advantages:
• it enforces links between concepts (the one currently being learnt and the
referred one);
• it enhances the mental model of the previously learnt concept and helps in
generalizing its applicability in multiple situated scenarios;
• it provides ease in learning the current concept by making familiarization with
past learning experiences.
Use of multi-sensory channels

The selection of objects should adequately use the visual, aural and tactile senses
of the learner. If any of the sensory channels is not being used at the time of
learning, the chances of getting distraction due to this channel are high (Bagui,
1998).
Context based selection of multimedia objects

When there are more than one multimedia objects available for representation of
the same task or concept, some of them would be more suitable for
representation in a particular context than in another. The presentation should
then use the most suitable object in the context. For example, a simulation
permits learner interaction with the objects on the screen (Figure 4.1), and is
appropriate for those who are learning about this subject for the first time. On the
other hand, a more experienced learner might want to review the concepts
without having to physically execute each simulation. In this case, a text-based
multimedia object would be more appropriate (Rogers et al, 1995).
Authenticity of multimedia objects

The learner should be aware of the authenticity of the multimedia objects (Laurel
et al, 1992). For example, schematic diagrams and animations of the processes
may not show the real objects but they are helpful in understanding the
underlying processes. The system should keep the learner aware of the
authenticity of the representation by suitable messages. For example, learners
can first learn about the basics of tympanic membrane using the simplified
Figure 4.2(a) to get ready for the intricate details in Figure 4.2(b), but while
showing Figure 4.2(a), the learner should be made aware that this figure is a
simplified form of the actual membrane.
Navigational objects selection

The navigation in typical educational systems takes place through various links
provided in the system. Rada (1995) pointed out that the link does not say what
happens to the screen when the user activates the link. The important point to
consider is the proper match of the learner’s expectations of outcome while
activating a link with the presentation of actual resulting interface connected to
the link.
According to the MR approach, the selection of links should not detract the
learner’s attention from the main task of learning. The existence of a link should
appear to the learner as transparent as possible. The MR approach identifies six
types of navigational links concerning learning processes under the Cognitive
Apprenticeship framework:
1. Direct successor link leads to the successive domain unit in the knowledge
hierarchy. Such transfer should arise from current context, for example, the
link to Ossicles-Incus in the bottom left message window in Figure 4.3.
2. Parallel concept link leads to the analogous domain unit for comparative
learning or to the unit related to another aspect of the domain content
currently being learnt. For example, clicking on the left side bones in
Figure 4.3 will bring the user to that particular bone’s unit. The learning of
one bone does not automatically require transfer to another bone, but being
analogous, it is helpful for the understanding if these bones are studied
together.
Figure 4.1 Simulation of middle ear disease

3. Fine grained unit link leads to the fine details of the domain content once
some missing information or misconceptions are identified in learners’
understanding (Patel and Kinshuk, 1997). These transfers are very contextual
and it is necessary to maintain the context during transfer. For example,
double clicking on the highlighted Stapedius in the graphic of Figure 4.3
will lead to the fine-grained unit describing Stapedius in detail.
4. Glossary link leads to a pop-up ‘spring loaded’ module (Nielsen, 1996) in
exploration process, which is available only while the learner is interested in
it and is explicitly doing something to keep it active (such as pressing the
mouse button).
5. Excursion link leads to a learning unit outside the current context (Kashihara
et al, 1997). Excursion links are used to provide related learning of current
context but the context in such case would not be as narrow as a term or a
part of a picture.
6. Problem links lead to problems related to the current conceptual unit.
Figure 4.2 Tympanic membrane

Different types of links should be clearly identified for their types (Benyon et al,
1997) and their representations should be consistent throughout the system.
Integration of multimedia objects

In many situations the presentation of the domain content demands more than
one multimedia object at a time on the screen for suitable representation. There
have also been many studies showing improvement in learning through more
than one multimedia object for the same domain content compared to a single
object. For example, Palmiter et al (1991) favoured the multi-sensory reception
of instruction by suggesting that the presentation should include verbal, visual
and motoric components. But not all possible combinations of multimedia
objects are adequate from a learning point of view. Consideration should be
given to how best to combine multiple multimedia objects in relation to different
learning tasks (Rogers and Scaife, 1997). Below are some recommendations
regarding integration of multimedia objects to be observed during the design
process of educational systems within the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework:
• There should not be more than one observation multimedia object at a time on
the screen. The exception is the comparative study of two actions, where more
than one active observation is recommended.
• The integration of multimedia objects should be complementary to each other
and should be synchronized (IBM, 1991). For example, audio narration along
with a diagram should direct the learner towards the salient parts of the
diagram (Rogers and Scaife, 1997). Care should also be taken not to present
the same material with more than one multimedia object.
• Decision-intensive objects such as flowcharts demand high cognitive loading.
Therefore integration of such objects with any other multimedia object is not
recommended.
• Integration of dynamic observation objects (such as animations) with static
observation objects (such as text) should be such that the learner should not be
forced to observe both of them by the same sensory channel at the same time.
Figure 4.3 Various types of navigational objects
The MR approach is implemented in the InterSim system described below.
The InterSim system

The InterSim system aims to facilitate competence in the subject matter by
providing basic and advanced knowledge of the domain as well as associated
cognitive skills. The Cognitive Apprenticeship framework (Collins et al, 1989) is
adopted in the system for supporting learning. The InterSim system covers three
areas of ear domain:
1. auditory system—structure, functionality and pathology of the ear;

2. physics of sound—basic and advance physics of sound related to the
auditory system; and
3. audiometric measurements—various graphs and diagrams related to the
auditory system and their interpretations.
In this way the system has its main focus on the auditory system and other areas
are provided for better understanding of the main area. The learning state in the
system is divided into four conceptual sub-processes to reflect the various stages
of the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework:
1. coarse grained instruction dominated learning;

2. fine-grained knowledge construction;

3. cognitive skills development; and
4. application of the acquired knowledge and skills.
The MR approach in the InterSim system

The MR approach is used for domain representation in various states and sub-
processes of the InterSim system as described below.
Multimedia objects selection

To select the appropriate multimedia objects for various parts of the system, the
educational objectives served by each sub-process of the InterSim system are
examined under the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework, as shown in
Table 4.2.
Various multimedia objects are then selected on the basis of the educational
objectives described in Table 4.2. The following section describes the rationale
for using various multimedia objects based on the application of MR approach
under the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework.
The receptive and active observation of the subject domain starts with the help
of static pictures along with corresponding text. Three types of static pictures are
used: normal static pictures, static pictures with sensitive parts (similar to image
maps), and static pictures with semi-sensitive parts. Sensitive parts in the
pictures represent those domain objects that are in the current domain hierarchy
and are part of the current learning goal. Such objects respond for mouse over,
single click and double click mouse actions. Semi-sensitive parts are those parts
that do not belong to the current domain hierarchy but are explained somewhere
else in the system. They are not part of the current learning goal. These objects
react only to double click mouse actions and provide information about how to
change the current learning goal and access the corresponding domain hierarchy
to get more information on that part.
The next stage in the receptive observation process deals with the dynamic and
functional behaviour of ear parts in the InterSim system. Animations are used in
the system for such representations. They provide a close look at the effects that
cannot be seen or are difficult to visualize in the real world (Towne, 1995). The
animations are considered not as the art of drawings-that-move but as the art of
movements-that-are-drawn (Baecker and Small, 1990). What happens between
each frame is more important than what exists on each frame. Three types of
animations are used in the InterSim system:
Table 4.2 Educational objectives served by various states and sub-processes in the
InterSim system
1. Regular phenomena are described with the help of automatic animations.

Such animations run on their own without requiring any learner intervention
and show the events in continuous loops.
2. Random or explicit actions (such as swallowing) within a running series of
actions are explained with the help of user-controlled animations. In these
animations, learners see a continuous regular action and they can generate a
particular event by taking some explicit action (for example, pressing a
button).
3. In situations where the initial state is static and an instantaneous action leads
to a whole series of actions, user-initiated animations are used. Learners
initially see the animation stopped in its starting position, and explicit action
on the, part of the learner leads to running the animation to show the
complete process.
Once the learners have observed a phenomenon in an animation, simulations are

provided to the learners for the acquisition of competence in skills. Simulations
are helpful for the training of operational skills where the learners can apply the
declarative and procedural knowledge acquired previously (Yacef and Alem,
1996). Learners can explore various scenarios and can get feedback on their
actions.
To provide a more realistic learning environment where necessary (such as the
structure of an organ or part of an organ), pictorial virtual reality (VR), also
known as ‘desktop VR’ (Hobbs and Moore, 1994) is used, which presents and
allows manipulation of three-dimensional objects and scenes. VR conveys reality
Figure 4.4 Screen shot of ossicle chain learning unit in the InterSim ear system
through the computer hence eliminating the need to use metaphors in the
learning process that fall short of reality and force the learner to make an internal
translation in order to use the system successfully (Hobbs and Moore, 1994).
Even more realistic cases are provided with the help of videos, which show the
actual phenomena in their reality, for example, a video sequence of treatment of
a particular disease on a human patient.
Decision-making skills are also provided to the learners with the help of
various flowcharts. Flowcharts represent and identify graphically the sequencing
process, and the options and conditions that affect the execution of the domain
content representation (Lara and Perez-Luque, 1996). In particular, flowcharts
are used for observation and exploration of the diagnosis and treatment of
various diseases by the students.
Navigational objects selection

In the InterSim system the navigation methods are selected following the MR
approach. For example, in the partial screen of the Ossicle Chain learning unit in
Figure 4.4, the navigation panel on the left side provides various combo boxes for
explicit navigation among various learning units. The ossicle chain picture on the
right behaves as an image map to allow navigation to successor units. The
textual links pop-up glossary window explains the terms.
Integration of multimedia objects

The InterSim system follows the MR approach in integrating multimedia objects
for domain content representation. For example, the concept of ‘appropriate
sound energy routing’ is presented by two comparative animations. On another
occasion, the structure of ossicles required representation both as a static picture
and as pictorial VR. Since both multimedia objects have similar initial visual
states (not recommended by the MR approach for simultaneous use) they are
used as alternatives and the learner can explicitly switch between the two
without being confused due to their initial similar states.
Concluding comment
Domain knowledge representation in learning systems requires adaptation to the
needs and competence of the learners, and the specific attributes of the domain.
Although multimedia technology provides an effective solution for representing
the domain knowledge, serious consideration of educational pedagogy is
required in the use of such objects for effective learning processes. The multiple
representation approach described in this chapter attempts to guide the use of
multimedia in learning systems. It provides recommendations for the selection of
multimedia objects for content representation, navigational objects representation
and integration of multimedia objects. The approach has been implemented in
the InterSim system prototype that is designed for learning human ear structure
and functionality.
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Part 2
Activation of learning
Chapter 5
Using interactive video-based multimedia to
scaffold learning in teacher education
John Baird
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to show how information technology—expressly
interactive, video-based multimedia—can enhance teacher education by
stimulating intending teachers to engage more effectively in the process of
productive professional learning.
The chapter centres on a discussion of the philosophical, conceptual and
methodological bases for an interactive, video-based CD ROM program entitled
‘QuILT: Quality in Learning and Teaching’, developed for core professional
studies subjects in three courses in the Faculty of Education, University of
Melbourne. These courses are the four-year Bachelor of Education (Primary), the
one-year Diploma in Education and the two-year Bachelor of Teaching. These
bases will involve various theoretical perspectives, including situated cognition,
cognitive apprenticeship, metacognition and guided reflection, and scaffolding of
three main types (conceptual, metacognitive, and strategic). Then, some key
metaphors that underpin program design and navigation are described, in order to
emphasize their importance for fostering cognitive and affective engagement and
activation of learning within a programme of teacher education.
Embedding multimedia within teacher education

In an environment of diminishing budgets and worsening staff-student ratios in
university faculties of education, teacher educators are increasingly pressed to
incorporate information and communications technology (ICT) within pre-
service education subjects. The nature of incorporation of ICT can vary
depending on its role in the subject. A ‘passive’, information-provision role is
when examples of recent software used in the school curriculum are presented to
students, or when ICT is used simply to deliver subject content. A more ‘active’
role for ICT is when it is used to train students in its effective use in teaching or,
as is the case in this chapter, when it is used to drive change in students’ thinking,
feeling and acting about their teaching and their students’ learning.
USING MULTIMEDIA TO SCAFFOLD LEARNING 65
Perceptions vary considerably regarding the extent and effectiveness of

incorporation of ICT within teacher education courses. On the one hand it has
been argued that, notwithstanding the ‘IT revolution’ that has occurred over the
decade, teacher education and classroom teaching approaches and strategies
often remain quite traditional (eg, Albion, 2000) and teacher education is yet to
benefit adequately from ICT advances (Davis, 1997; Schrum and Dehoney, 1998).
On the other hand there is no doubt that, with the accelerating push to embed the
‘digital revolution’ within university teaching courses, multimedia programs of
increasing quality are being designed.
Debate continues regarding the extent to which ICT should be incorporated
into, transform, or replace, more traditional instructional approaches (eg, Marx et
al, 1998; Willis, 1997). As one aspect of this debate, it has been argued that the
technology of new multimedia programs has sometimes overshadowed their
educational rationale and learning principles (eg, Brown et al, 1996). That is, the
affordances and constraints of the technology itself may drive the nature of the
new programs, rather than servicing them. In order to achieve genuine
improvement in educational quality, consideration must first be given to course
aims, processes and outcomes and then to how ICT may help realize these
features. Such course aims will be considered next.
Pre-service teachers should leave their course of professional preparation
having the confidence and competence to take informed responsibility and
control over their own teaching practice. In order to do this, they need to have
assumed a basis for principled action—action based upon personal values,
beliefs, intentions and purposes that are defensible, feasible and, above all,
personally appropriate. Elsewhere, I have argued that quality teaching and
learning should centre on a process of purposeful inquiry, comprising reflection
(asking evaluative questions) and action (to find out answers to these questions)
(Baird 1991a, 1991b, 1999). An outcome of this process of purposeful inquiry is
productive metacognition regarding personal practice. I define metacognition in
teaching as comprising three components (Baird, 1991a):
1. metacognitive knowledge—knowledge of the nature of teaching, of effective

teaching techniques and strategies, and of personal teaching characteristics
and habits;
2. metacognitive awareness—as I teach, understanding what I am doing and
why I am doing it;
3. metacognitive control—based on this awareness, making productive
decisions about my teaching and my students’ learning.
As is described below, the QuILT program was directed to enhancing users’

metacognition in teaching through a process of purposeful inquiry, centred on
reflection and guided by various design and procedural components of the
program.
66 ACTIVATION OF LEARNING
General features of QuILT

QuILT: Quality In Learning and Teaching, has formed the basis for study in each
course for the last three years, used each year by a total of over 800 students. As
described above, its aim is to assist intending teachers to develop personal
conceptions of quality in learning and teaching and to apply these developing
conceptions to their own professional practice. The two-disk program contains
over 300 QuickTime video clips of authentic classroom teaching and learning
episodes and associated teacher and pupil interviews. The episodes are situated
in six classes taught by seven teachers in one elementary school and one secondary
school. The classes encompass 11 years of schooling—from the preparatory year
to year 10. QuILT represents everyday, authentic classroom practices of
practising teachers; its purpose is not to present scripted episodes of exemplary
teaching.
In each of the three years, the program has been revised to improve aspects of
program architecture, navigation and instructional clarity, but the aims and
conceptual underpinnings of the program remain unchanged.
Philosophical, conceptual and procedural underpinning of

the QuILT program
Constructivism
QuILT is based on a constructivist epistemology and its design reflects a
fundamental philosophical position regarding the nature of effective learning.
This epistemological position is grounded in the belief that quality learning and
teaching are fundamentally pluralist and relativist in nature (eg, Alexander,
1996; Baird, 1989). The position eschews the notion that there is one correct, or
even best, way to teach or to learn, independent of the content or the human,
societal, physical, or temporal context. Thus, looking for the ‘right answer’
(indeed, any simple answer to any complex question) by applying convergent,
hypothetico-deductive thinking is usually inappropriate and unproductive. As
there are potentially many ways to teach well, and teaching well in one subject,
context or for certain purposes does not necessarily apply to other, different
teaching conditions, the program fosters inductive logic to help the user explore,
illuminate, articulate and justify a personal view of quality.
Situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship

Situated cognition stresses the importance of learners observing and purposefully
sharing the practices, contexts and culture in which concepts are located. Brown
et al (1989) detail how ‘knowing and doing’ are frequently treated in education
communities as separate entities, with ‘doing’ greatly undervalued in favour of
beliefs that knowledge can be abstracted from the settings in which it is learnt
and used. Situative theories of thinking, learning and knowledge argue that such
conceptions of learning are reductive. A situative perspective posits that
knowledge is most meaningfully understood when experienced through authentic
contexts and authentic activities (Brown et al, 1989; Lave andWenger, 1991).
Putnam and Borko (2000) acknowledge the roots of what is increasingly known
as the ‘situative perspective’ in the work of Dewey andVygotsky, and provide a
summary of the perspective as three conceptual themes. These three themes
emphasize that ‘cognition is (a) situated in particular physical and social
contexts; (b) social in nature; and (c) distributed across the individual, other
persons, and tools’ (p 4). For the situated theme, they emphasize the requirement
for authentic activities; for the social aspect, they review research that highlights
the need for ‘enculturating students into various discourse communities’ (p 5)
and helping students learn how to learn; for the distributed aspect, they argue for
a move away from individual competencies and recognition that cognition is
shared across other individuals and the tools needed to achieve success. They
consider the implications of the situative perspective for the learning of both pre-
service and practising teachers, where cases ‘provide shared experiences for
teachers to examine together, using multiple perspectives and frameworks…
(where some) interactive multimedia cases and hypermedia environments have
the potential to provide even richer sets of materials documenting classroom
teaching and learning’ (p 8).
Metacognition, guided reflection and scaffolding

Asking evaluative questions and determining answers, and identifying problems
and devising and managing solutions, are crucial competencies that cohere
professional thinking, feeling and acting. These competencies require
scaffolding. As noted elsewhere (McLoughlin et al, 2000), scaffolding of
learning in QuILT takes three main forms: metacognitive scaffolding, conceptual
scaffolding and strategic scaffolding.
Metacognition has its roots in Dewey’s (1933) notion of learning to think, a
process involving active monitoring, critical evaluation and purposeful seeking
of meanings and relationships. Above, I related a process of reflection (based on
asking evaluative questions and then determining answers to these questions) and
an outcome of metacognition (as knowledge about, and awareness and control
over, personal practice). Two seemingly conflicting features of QuILT are
central to program design and manner of operation. These features are user
metacognitive control and scaffolding of learning through guided reflection.
The first feature is that the user determines the nature and extent of approach,
progress and outcome based upon personal needs, concerns and
interests.Through-out the program, the user remains metacognitively in control,
determining which video sequences to consider, in what order, and to what
extent each is analysed. No ‘theory’ is presented directly anywhere in the
program. Only when the user has formulated tentative values, beliefs, or
perspectives by interacting with the program is ‘theory’ introduced through class

discussion, lecture or assigned reading.
The second feature, however, is that video episodes and sequences are
structured to foster a process of guided reflection by which key ideas and issues
are progressively clarified and thus learning is scaffolded through enhanced
metacognitive awareness and control.
Three aspects of the program contribute to this metacognitive scaffolding:
screen questions, lenses and notepad. The user works through the program in the
nature, manner and extent desired, but is continually confronted with screen
questions that challenge understandings and invite links to personal prior
knowledge and belief systems. The user is encouraged to attend to and clarify the
problem or issue from different perspectives by returning to the classroom
episode using the four different lenses. The electronic notepad enables users to
record their thinking and feeling as they engage with the episodes, and induce
educational principles from the specifics of the episode.
Two other sorts of scaffolding are attendant upon this metacognitive
scaffolding. The process of inductive logic fosters conceptual scaffolding, where
key concepts are generated actively by the user and then subjected to review and
critique. Guiding principles for practice then build upon these key concepts.
Strategic scaffolding occurs where alternative scenarios for development of
classroom actions and events are provided. The user judges the effectiveness of
each of these scenarios and uses this information to formulate strategic plans for
dealing with each scenario.
According to this view, quality derives from coherence among the three
aspects shown, so that thinking, feeling and acting are integrated, purposeful and
productive. As already mentioned, this conception of quality allows for different
representations of particular thoughts, feelings and actions, depending on the
individuals concerned, the nature and purposes of the learning and teaching
involved, and other contextual and societal features. Thus, quality is not defined
by the actual knowledge, values and beliefs that are held, the intentions and
purpose that are sought, or the approaches and practices that are enacted. What
defines quality is the awareness and control of these aspects of personal practice
that arise from their considered integration. This conception of quality that
underpins QuILT is represented in the central metaphor of construction of a
patchwork QuILT, and it is further imbued in the structural and procedural
metaphors that direct the user’s approach to and progress through the program,
all of which is discussed next.
Metaphors used to frame the QuILT program
Overall metaphor of quilt construction

The goal of QuILT is represented metaphorically as a finished patchwork quilt: a
metaphor for the user’s coherent personal view of quality in teaching. It
integrates the major aspects of teaching and learning, and comprises patches of
nine types, each of which is a major ‘Focus Area’ or topic covered in the
program, discussed below.
Construction of a patchwork quilt is considered a helpful metaphor to frame
progress towards quality of personal pedagogical thinking, feeling and acting. A
quilt is created through the weaving of fibres to produce material from which the
patches are made, and the construction and then combination of these patches to
create a harmonious and distinctive product. Quilt construction involves
individual expertise, interpersonal and collaborative endeavour, societal norms
and mores, and contextual and physical constraints that all come together to
produce a product with both aesthetic and functional value. All stages of quilt
construction involve purposeful thinking, feeling and acting. Constructing a
considered, coherent position regarding personal professional practice involves
similar attributes and processes.
Structural metaphor: patches of the quilt

As teacher education students move through the QuILT program they encounter
a range of ‘Focus Areas’, or major topics, related to classroom learning and
teaching. Metaphorically, each of these Focus Areas is a patch of the quilt (see
Figure 5.1). As the user moves through the Focus Areas (in the manner and in
the order that he or she chooses), opportunities are provided to link insights,
conceptions or strategies in different areas, by which process the patches
metaphorically are stitched together.
The nine Focus Areas featured in QuILT include such central components of
pedagogy as ‘Planning units for learning’, ‘Development of learners’ and
‘Question-ing for learning’. When using Focus Area 4, ‘Student and classroom
management’, for example, users analyse diverse classroom scenarios depicted in
over 50 video clips. This analysis aims to interpret activities and behaviours,
predict what actions might follow certain key points or critical episodes, propose
and justify actions they would take themselves in such a situation, and draw
inferences and conclusions about worthwhile, feasible teaching strategies that
foster effective classroom learning. Throughout, the user infers the effectiveness
and desirability of classroom actions and determines methods to employ in future
personal practice.
Figure 5.1 Focus areas in QuILT
Making and stitching the patches: balancing individual and

group endeavour
The interdependent relationship between individual and group endeavour both in
patchwork quilt construction and the operation of the QuILT program is the basis
for this feature of the program.
While the goal of QuILT is essentially personal—a position regarding the nature
of quality, generated through the program—the critical importance of groups for
testing the viability of new understandings through interaction with peers (eg,
Savery and Duffy, 1995) requires that collaborative work is an integral part of
the program.
Each student is required to prepare for weekly class sessions by completing
the Focus Area that is the topic for that week. For this preparation, the student
inserts entries within an electronic notepad (outlined below), built into the
program.The printout of this notepad is then brought to the face-to-face class
session, where the entries are discussed, as outlined next.
Class work in the teacher education subjects in which QuILT is used is
organized in student groups of approximately 30 students. Each class group is
further divided into ‘syndicate groups’ of five to six students. Much of the class
work is done through collaborative learning in these syndicate groups. In a given
week, for instance, members of each syndicate group may be required to prepare
a task for joint completion and presentation to the whole class group. This task
usually requires the syndicate group to share and discuss diverse points of view
arising from the QuILT Focus Area and summarized in their notepads, and
decide upon and defend a consensual position regarding an aspect of the topic. In
most class sessions, the lecturer displays selected segments of QuILT through
data display in order to structure discussion and, when appropriate, to scaffold
students’ understandings by linking to relevant theory. Once again returning to
the program’s primary metaphor of quilt-making, collaboration is reinforced as
an enabling condition for constructing the harmonious and coherent patterns and
relationships that distinguish quality.
Next, three additional operational metaphors used in QuILT will be
considered, in order to elaborate the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings
of the program.
Operational metaphor: magnifying glass

A user begins work in a Focus Area by observing a video clip of the classroom
actions of school pupils and their teacher. Metaphorically, the user opens the door
to a teacher’s classroom, and closely examines what is occurring within
(Figure 5.2). Thus, a magnifying glass is presented as an operational metaphor for
this process of close examination of people and events. Operated via a standard
VCR type controller, users can play, replay or pause each clip as required and
thus examine classroom episodes closely and methodically.
Through screen questions, the user is prompted to reflect upon the classroom
sequence and assume a personal position regarding the extent to which it
illustrates worthwhile and effective learning and teaching. Thus, screen questions
are a stimulus for the user to induce from the specifics of the classroom episodes
more general principles for personal thinking, feeling and acting. Through a
simple point and click sequence, the user can insert each screen question within
the electronic notepad (Figure 5.3), and then use the keyboard to type a response
to the question.
The questions and responses recorded in the notepad can then be edited, saved
to a file on a local disk or network, and printed, all in a fashion similar to a
simple text document. As the subject proceeds, this notepad develops into a
professional journal and progressive entries can be used to reflect on the nature of,
and changes to, personal views about quality in classroom practices.
Operational metaphor: lenses

The metaphor of a magnifying glass to examine the behaviours of others is
extended in QuILT through a related metaphor—that of coloured glass lenses.
These lenses are introduced to scaffold progressive understanding of the
meanings that underlie these behaviours.
Figure 5.2 ‘Entering classrooms’ in QuILT
Figure 5.3 Screen question and electronic notepad
Screen backgrounds on which clips appear are coded in four different colours,
each of which signifies to the user a different way of observing and
understanding what is happening. Each of the four lenses addresses a different
question, as follows:
1. ‘What is the teacher doing?’

2. ‘What is the teacher thinking and feeling?’
3. ‘What are the pupils doing?’

4. ‘What are the pupils thinking and feeling?’
By progressively using the lenses, the user can reassess the same clip and move
from observing behaviours to ascertaining meanings and purposes that underlie
them. Through this process, the user’s tentative evaluation of whether observed
behaviours constitute quality learning and teaching is progressively supported,
challenged or elaborated. Through the use of these lenses, the user comes to
realize that adequate interpretation and evaluation of the nature and worth of a
particular classroom episode may often only be achieved once the episode is
considered from these four points of view.
In order to attend to the questions ‘What is the teacher thinking and feeling?’
and ‘What are the pupils thinking and feeling?’, the user views interviews in
which teachers outline their classroom intentions and provide self-evaluations of
their actions, and pupils provide their perceptions of lesson nature, progress and
content, and of their learning and the teacher’s teaching. These interviews provide
insights regarding classroom interactions that are normally not available through
classroom observation alone.
From the perspective of the over-arching program metaphor of quilt-making,
each of the four lenses are the analogues of the coloured fibres that, through
weaving, form the material’s warp and weft. In this way, the pluralist and
relativist nature of quality teaching and learning is reinforced as an intricate,
complex design constructed from experience, reflection and action.
Operational metaphor: mirror

A second major operational metaphor complements that of the magnifying glass
and its different lenses. Where the magnifying glass enabled the user to examine
closely the values, beliefs, intentions and behaviours of others, this second
metaphor is of a mirror, where such aspects are turned to oneself. The mirror is used
to focus upon personal thinking, feeling and acting, in order to determine
personal principles for future teaching approaches and actions.
The mirror metaphor is introduced at the end of each Focus Area through a
task entitled an ‘Action planner’ (Figure 5.4). This task requires the user to
identify and synthesize key issues or insights that emerged as he or she worked
through the Focus Area, and then to determine a personal action plan for
teaching, based on these issues and insights. Each Action planner is a Word
document, opened by clicking on the Mirror icon. The user completes the
activities in the planner by inserting text where indicated. Completed planners
are used as part of the formal assessment in the subject.
Figure 5.5 represents diagrammatically the relationship between the
magnifying glass and mirror metaphors in QuILT. For the magnifying glass, the
user moves from a consideration of the teaching and learning actions of others to
the thoughts and feelings that underlie these actions. For the mirror, personal
Figure 5.4 ‘Action planner’

thoughts and feelings about desirable practice are first elucidated, then
appropriate actions to enact these thoughts and feelings are determined and
rehearsed.
Some trends arising from program use

Over the three-year period, extensive and diverse data have been collected on
students’ perceptions of the program, of patterns of its use, and of learning and
teaching outcomes. These data are not considered in detail here, but a summary
is given of users’ perceptions of the program’s major strengths and shortcomings.
The following aspects constituted major perceived strengths of the program:
• its authentic nature that allowed access to ‘real teachers in real classrooms’—
commented upon strongly in 1999 and continued to appear each year
thereafter;
• the high level of engagement that the program affords—also repeated strongly
each year;
• the spread of effective and ineffective teaching and learning episodes that
helped students focus upon personal perspectives of quality and strategies to
develop a personal teaching approach and style;
• the four different ‘lenses’ and, particularly, the teacher and student interviews
that directed attention to crucial aspects of teaching and learning that
otherwise might not have been identified;
Figure 5.5 QuILT: relationship between magnifying glass and mirror metaphors
• the notepad and ‘Action planners’ that required students to record ideas and
perspectives in a coherent and structured manner to support critical analysis
and self-reflection.
Each of the following aspects were seen as major shortcomings:
• technological concerns of various sorts: lack of student (and staff)

competence and confidence in using interactive multimedia; technical
problems associated with incompatibility of the program with the capabilities
of older computers; the imposition of requirements for levels of technological
expertise and relatively high-end hardware. As mentioned above, this type of
concern varied with the type of cohort in a given year and, for similar cohorts,
diminished across the three years;
• a weekly workload associated with QuILT that many students considered
excessive and, especially in the first two years, considered to be unduly
emphasized in subject assessment;
• confusion associated with some screen questions and ‘Action planner’ tasks.
This concern, attributable both to some poorly designed aspects and to
students’ unfamiliarity with the inductive approach, progressively diminished
as the result of replacement of troublesome items and enhanced guidance and
support.
Concluding comment
Teaching is a social art and science. As such, it is unlikely that interactive
multimedia could or should replace the real world experiences of face-to-face
instruction, group discussion and school-based teaching that form parts of most
teacher education courses. Multimedia programs can, however, constitute

engaging and powerful adjuncts to these real-time experiences by providing
opportunities for systematic, focused reflection, for illumination of core
educational ideas, and for enhanced metacognitive knowledge, awareness and
control over personal teaching practice. In so doing, they will have achieved
their goal of enhancing both cognitive and affective engagement in purposeful,
productive teacher professional education.
Acknowledgement
I wish to acknowledge the crucial contribution of Keith Pigdon, Marilyn
Woolley and Bradley Shrimpton to the design and production of QuILT, to the
research outlined above, and to the writing of an earlier version of this chapter.
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141–53
Chapter 6
Using authentic patient encounters to
engage medical students in a problem-based
learning curriculum
Mike Keppell, Kristine Elliott, Gregor Kennedy, Susan Elliott and
Peter Harris
Introduction
In this chapter we will examine how medical triggers utilized in clinical
scenarios are used to activate student learning in a problem-based learning
medical curriculum. Medical triggers represent the first point of contact for
students undertaking problem-based learning tutorials. The role of the trigger is
to begin to immerse the student in the context of the weekly problem. The
chapter will examine the specific design strategies that have been enlisted to
engage the student in contextualizing medical problems. This examination will
focus on: the nature of problem-based learning (PBL), PBL cases, problem
triggers, media deployed to address the problem triggers and the epistemological
beliefs of designers who develop these learner interactions. The chapter will
conclude with a number of recommendations for educators utilizing authentic
learning resources in technologyenhanced environments.
Problem-based learning
Teaching and learning strategy

The increasing use of PBL as an instructional method reflects a current
international trend away from teacher-centred delivery towards student-centred
learning programmes. Such programmes commonly present students with a
problem and require them to conduct their own inquiry, which involves
formulating hypotheses, developing questions, gathering and interpreting data,
and communicating their findings to peers and tutors (Brown et al, 1989; Linn et
al, 1996; Schank, 1997; von Glasersfeld, 1987).
PBL is being widely adopted as a powerful teaching and learning strategy in
medical education. In particular, PBL may address recognized deficiencies in
traditional medical education and the way medical knowledge is applied in the
clinical setting (Koschmann et al, 1997). Situated in a constructivist paradigm,
PBL is a learner-centred pedagogical strategy, where the students themselves
USING AUTHENTIC PATIENT ENCOUNTERS 79
assume major responsibility for their learning. These are also considered to be
real-world or authentic learning experiences. Authentic learning experiences are
‘those which are problem- or case-based, that immerse the learner in the situation
requiring him or her to acquire skills or knowledge in order to solve the problem
or manipulate the situation’ (Jonassen et al, 1993, p 235). Generally PBL is
divided into several phases that involve small group work and independent study
(Barrows andTamblyn, 1980; Schmidt, 1993). Specifically, Albanese and
Mitchell (1993) have described PBL as used in medical and health sciences
curricula as ‘an instructional method characterized by the use of patient problems
as a context for students to learn problem-solving skills and acquire knowledge
about the basic and clinical sciences’ (p 53). PBL problems are unique because
they are presented to students before their exposure to underlying basic science or
clinical concepts (Albanese and Mitchell, 1993).
Activation
Essential to PBL is the concept that ‘activation of prior knowledge facilitates the
subsequent processing of new information’ (Norman and Schmidt, 1992, p 559).
Research on prior knowledge and the need to account for the learner’s existing
ideas and concepts in teaching and learning has a long history within the
education and cognitive science literature. For instance Dewey (1938) examined
experience and education; Ausubel (1960) examined subsumption theory; Mayer
(1979) focused on assimilation theory; Rumelhart and Norman (1983) and
Gordon and Rennie (1987) focused on schema theory. Little appears to have
changed since 1979 when Mayer commented that ‘it seems that one cannot read
a textbook on learning and memory without finding a statement to the effect that
learning involves connecting new ideas to old knowledge’ (Mayer, 1979, p 136).
Within the context of PBL, Schmidt (1993) suggests that the extent of prior
knowledge is one of the major determinants of the ‘nature and amount of new
information that can be processed’ (p 424). The importance of focusing on the
concept of prior knowledge in the PBL process is that students soon realize that
‘prior knowledge of the problem is, in itself, insufficient for them to understand
it in depth’ (Norman and Schmidt, 1992, p 557). PBL utilizes this inherent
dilemma to motivate learners to seek an understanding of the clinical case and
address the deficiency in their knowledge. Under the guidance of the PBL tutor,
an exchange of ideas among students in the PBL session assists in activating
their prior knowledge. This exchange needs to occur before students further
investigate learning resources, for it creates a learner readiness’ by asking the
students to generate hypotheses for the problem.
PBL cases
One method of approaching the activation of learning in a PBL curriculum is to
create weekly problems that address different clinical issues; these are called
‘problems of the week’. Each problem begins with a visual and/or audio trigger.
The aim of the trigger is to set the stage for the clinical problem by providing
students with an image of the hypothetical patient and some of the circumstances
surrounding the medical scenario. For example, the trigger shown in Figure 6.1
provides the context and setting for a lost mountaineer in a cold, high-altitude
environment. In viewing the image the medical student needs to examine
information that may be pertinent to possible medical issues. Does the
mountaineer have sufficient food, water and clothing? How cold does the
temperature get in this area? What would happen if the mountaineer were lost?
How long can he survive without food? How could he protect himself from the
elements without a tent? Each question encourages the student to examine
physiological and psychological stress, the effects of altitude, hypothermia,
dehydration and metabolism, etc.
Using the information elicited from the trigger text and image, students are
instructed to list information about the patient, identify the presenting problems,
list possible causes of each problem (hypotheses), provide a rationale for each
hypothesis, prioritize the list of hypotheses, and then determine what other
additional information (physical examinations, laboratory tests, etc) is required to
differentiate between hypotheses. During this process students are progressively
given supporting information in the form of a medical history, physical
examination and investigation results.
Medical triggers
One of the advantages of presenting clinical problems online is the capacity to
enrich them with high quality graphics, photographs, Shockwave movies, audio
and video. Students are also able to access the material and revisit the content as
needed within the networked learning environment. Our aim in designing these
triggers is to create images that ‘suspend the disbelief of students and allow them
to approach each problem as if it were a real-life clinical case. Since the trigger
represents the entry point to the problem, it could potentially influence student
interaction with the problem by determining how realistic students rated the
encounter (Elliott and Keppell, 2000). For instance, the trigger shown in
Figure 6.2 was used to set the stage for a clinical scenario. Initial evaluation and
student discussions with Elliott (co-author) suggested that we achieved our goal
in this respect. Students viewing the medical trigger:
expressed great concern for a virtual patient who was experiencing severe pain.
‘How could they have taken photos of somebody in so much pain?’ The point to
highlight here is that the hospitalized patient was an actor, the scenario was
staged and the students had been taken in by the reality of the image. (Elliott and
Keppell, 2000, p 280)
In conjunction with the trigger, students are provided with information about
the case:
Figure 6.1 Medical trigger utilized to activate learning in nutrition, digestion and
metabolism
You are a medical student working in the Emergency Department of a
hospital in central Victoria. The medical officer tells you that one hour
ago, while Mentor was resting after painting one of the new
accommodation huts, he suddenly complained of severe pain in the right
side of his chest. The pain settled after a few minutes, but he has become
increasingly more short of breath.
From this information it is possible to focus attention on the critical issues about
Mentor. Key information includes that he is a 28-year-old male, is breathless, has
severe chest pain and requires an oxygen mask. From this further information the
medical student in conjunction with his or her colleagues and PBL tutor
explore possible medical reasons for Mentor’s shortness of breath. He or she is
also encouraged to define symptoms and signs without necessarily having prior
expert knowledge.
Elliott and Keppell (2000) have reported on the artificial nature of practice
simulations, where a medical condition and/or scenario is presented to students
as ‘too neat and tidy’ (Atkins and O’Halloran, 1995, p 6). This is in direct
contrast to the complexity of real-life patient encounters, which may include
unusual presentations and could involve missing or even erroneous data
(Koschmann et al, 1996). Koschmann et al (1997) suggest that the ‘mechanics of
Figure 6.2 Medical trigger utilized to activate learning in cardio-respiratory and

locomotor systems
simulating an encounter with a patient…can be quite cumbersome’ (p l). The
challenge of designing triggers for clinical problems is to ensure that the images
clearly demonstrate sufficient detail to enable students to begin the process of
formulating hypotheses about the scientific basis of a medical condition, without
compromising on the complexity of reality (Elliott and Keppell, 2000).
For instance, the trigger shown in Figure 6.3 of an elderly lady lying on the
floor demonstrated the importance of using ‘physical props’ (lights, ladders,
streamers, etc) in the design of the trigger. What is the significance of the light
and the time of day/night? Why is the ladder overturned? What was the woman
doing to end up in this situation? What do the hat and bag suggest about the activity
level of the woman? Is there anything peculiar about the right leg position as
compared to the left? How long do you think the elderly lady has been lying on
the floor?
A well-designed trigger can, for example, encourage the clinical-based
reasoning skills of students. A poorly designed trigger that makes the medical
condition too obvious, or alternatively distracts students with too much detail and
causes the formulation of too many hypotheses, could inhibit this process.
Observation of students engaged in PBL tutorials demonstrated how carefully
students scrutinized the visual triggers looking for cues to begin the formulation
of hypotheses. It was therefore critical that visual images were consistent, and
that they matched the accompanying textual information (Elliott and Keppell,
2000).
Figure 6.3 Medical trigger demonstrating the importance of setting and context
Design considerations in creating medical triggers
Media deployed to create the medical trigger

Media are often deployed to create medical triggers because it is not always
practical to access real patients for undergraduate education. Options include
paper-based problems, ‘trained patient surrogates’ (Koschmann et al, 1996) and
the media-based patient encounters examined in this chapter. In development, an
attempt is made to match the nature of the medical condition or context to the
appropriate media type (eg, static image, sequence of static images, video, audio,
or Shockwave movie). A trigger that, for example, portrays a medical condition
such as myasthenia gravis needs to show the progressive nature of skeletal-
muscle fatigue. Consequently, video is the most appropriate medium to illustrate
this progressive nature. Other triggers needed to demonstrate distinctive
sequential changes in a process can be portrayed through a series of digitized
photographs using a Shockwave or QuickTime movie. Often, a single digitized
photograph conveys sufficient information to begin the problem-based learning
approach (Keppell et al, 2001).
In creating triggers for the first three years of the medical curriculum we
carefully considered the medical problem, the nature of the condition and the best
way to portray an initial encounter that would activate student learning in

relation to the information provided. Of the 60 triggers created, 64 per cent
consist of still images or graphics, 27 per cent consist of Shockwave movies and
9 per cent consist of video. In creating the medical triggers, our focus was to
‘apply each medium to the learning process it best supports’ (Koumi, 1994, p
57). This required a careful analysis and attention to detail with the medical
trigger. In addition we matched ‘each topic/task with the medium whose
characteristics would best benefit that topic’ (Koumi, 1994, p 55). The medical
trigger was an activating strategy, an attempt to initiate the student interaction
with the clinical problem. In our design we exploited the ‘distinctive
presentational attributes’ (Koumi, 1994, p 43) of the media in conjunction with
an explicit teaching strategy in an attempt to match the media to the message.
This approach focuses on improving learning by attempting to match the salient
features/capabilities of the medium (photo, Shockwave movie, video) to the
particular learning situation, tasks involved in the learning situation, the learners
and the ‘capabilities’ used to enhance and optimize the instructional design
(Nathan and Robinson, 2001). The trigger represents one micro-component of
the PBL process. This approach is supported by Kozma (1991) who suggests that
we need to consider ‘micro-level decisions in the design of instructional programs
and understand the moment-to-moment collaboration between the learner and the
medium of the learning context’ (p 76).
Matching media to the message

In approaching the creation of medical triggers it was essential that we utilized
media for educational purposes rather than allow the technology/media to
overpower the educational message (Koschmann et al, 1996). To guide the
utilization of media in teaching and learning a number of design principles were
considered. Norman’s (1999) examination of the affordances and constraints of
‘everyday things’, Kozma’s (1991) focus on exploiting the educational
‘capabilities’ of media and Koumi’s (1994) examination of the ‘comparative
merits’ of media appear to offer promise in this area.
‘Affordances’ refer to the perceived and actual properties that determine how
a ‘thing’ can be used. Affordances also provide strong clues as to how the ‘thing’
should be used. Norman (1999) examined common day-to-day objects such as
door handles: the salient features of the handle should signal whether we push or
pull the door. In examining these principles in the use of media, Collins and
Bielaczyc (2001) suggested that:
affordances must be seen as more than just the kinds of information a

medium can communicate well. Affordances also include the ways the
content is presented, and the effect it has on the audience, and the room it
allows for tailoring the impact of one’s message, (p 2)
When the concept of affordances is applied to media in the medical trigger, PBL
designers begin to consider carefully their choice of media in order to match the
message to the media.
Kozma (1991) focused on exploiting the capabilities of media for enhancing
the educational message. In particular, by emphasizing the design and the use of
media from an instructional design perspective, good quality teaching and
learning interactions can be optimized. Koumi (1994), in suggesting the concept
of comparative merits of media, also provides a useful principle for creating
micro-interactions like the triggers utilized in our curricula. Comparative merits
examine the educational judgements that we need to make in deciding why one
type of medium as opposed to another should be utilized to create the trigger.
For instance, photographs may provide a realistic portrayal, affect attitudes,
appreciations and motivations, and are relatively low cost as compared to video.
Shockwave movies in which a series of photos can be used may provide more
action/illusion of movement or sequential interactions as compared to an
individual photo. Video allows pictures and sound to be synchronized, but is
relatively high cost compared to photos or Shockwave movies. Video may
provide a fluid and dynamic portrayal, which also utilizes the power of the
spoken word to enhance the users’ understand ing of the setting. In fact this
comparative merit of video may be ‘easier to process because the viewers’
senses are fed with stimuli that are realistic and are absorbed effortlessly and
almost unconsciously’ (England and Finney, 1999, p 155). On the other hand,
static images may require viewers to contribute more to their interpretation of the
context and setting because they do not necessarily have smooth transitions to
different settings or the spoken word. Video is also useful for portraying social
interactions, but it must be remembered that the field of view is predetermined,
which provides selectivity that may enhance the micro-interaction or mislead the
learner because it over-simplifies the process or social interaction.
Koumi’s model also suggests that there will be other merits that will need to
be individually considered depending upon the culture, institution, faculty and
preferences in the development team. The principle of ‘comparative merits’
offers a means to customize media to the individual teaching and learning
situation to assure ‘pedagogical fit’ of medical triggers.
Epistemological beliefs of designers

Another major factor that we must consider in designing learning interactions
such as medial triggers is our set of epistemological assumptions in relation to
the learning environment. As designers in virtual environments, Koschmann
(2000) suggests that we have an obligation ‘to make explicit our theories of
teaching and learning…that motivate our work and that are embedded in our
designs’ (Koschmann, 2000, p 2). In other words, what were our explicit choices
in deciding to use a photograph, Shockwave, video and audio as a teaching
resource for activating student involvement with the clinical scenario? Vrasidas
(2000) suggests that context and content are crucial in constructivist

environments, and that the goal of constructivist educators is to assist students to
‘think and act like experts’ (p 350).
Epistemological beliefs of educators and designers of learning interactions
have a major influence on student learning (Reeves, 1997). In fact, Bain et al
(1998) suggest, ‘the educational context in which students learn is heavily
influenced by the epistemological and educational assumptions of their academic
teachers’ (p 49). In their research they found that academics differed on a wide
range of beliefs about knowledge, which influenced the methods used in their
teaching. They suggested that these different knowledge beliefs also influence
the creation of technology-enhanced teaching and learning resources. Likewise
we must also consider the epistemological values of our students. This is
essential as good pedagogic design needs to consider where students ‘are
conceptually’ (Laurillard, 1993, p 193). Students bring to studying their own
epistemological values that have often been nurtured in previous educational
settings. Students, like academic instructional designers, may also have a
preference for a particular learning style for most of their academic tasks (Jones
and Kember, 1994).
Academic instructional designers also need to carefully examine their own
beliefs about teaching and learning and be aware of when different approaches may
be necessary to achieve ‘pedagogical fit’. ‘There are times when a more
instructivist approach is appropriate and other times when a more constructivist
approach is appropriate. It always depends on the context, content, resources, and
learners’ (Vrasidas, 2000, p 358). In our approach to creating triggers, as well as
considering the affordances, capabilities and comparative merits of different
media, we need to examine the obvious constraints in relation to facilities, staff,
budget, resources, bandwidth variations for Internet delivery and the place of the
medical trigger in the context of the problem.
An initial evaluation was undertaken in relation to the 18 triggers utilized in
semesters one and two and delivered in 1999 (Elliott and Keppell, 2000). The
Director of the Faculty Education Unit was interviewed and asked about her
perceptions in relation to the effectiveness of the triggers. She believed that ‘the
more authentic the trigger the more students were drawn in by the reality of the
situation and the more effective it was as a tool to initiate discussion about the
scenario’ (Elliott and Keppell, 2000, p 280). Observation of students in a PBL
setting yielded some surprising results. Instead of spending a great deal of time
analysing the trigger ‘at the beginning of the PBL session students would quickly
(almost casually) look at the trigger’. After discussion the students would ‘revisit
the trigger (again reasonably quickly) looking for information that would further
refine their ideas. The process was repeated several times’ (Elliott and Keppell,
2000, p 281).
Recommendations
As constructivist educators in a PBL curriculum there are a number of principles
that have assisted our use of media-rich resources to activate student learning.
We have found that media in the form of graphics, photographs, Shockwave
movies and video can be utilized to create authentic clinical encounters.
Although it appears that ‘the more media that are combined the harder it is to
keep all the factors appropriate’ (England and Finney, 1999, p 156), it seems that
the more meticulous the design the more realistic and appealing the trigger is
perceived to be by students (Elliott and Keppell, 2000). A great deal of thought
is required in creating a trigger that does not simplify the clinical issue or make
the clinical issue overly complex in PBL.
Burford and Cooper (2000) suggest that ‘quality is judged in terms of the
extent to which a product or service meets its stated purpose’ (p 14). The use of
media (graphics, photographs, Shockwave movies, video) should never
overpower the educational focus. Matching the multimedia to the message
(educational goal) is the crucial aspect of our approach. It is important to exploit
the capabilities of the media by using instructional methods that make full use of
their characteristics. One method of doing so is to weigh carefully the
comparative merits of the different media when making your choice.
As educators and designers it is essential that we are aware of our own
epistemological beliefs about teaching and learning as these views dramatically
affect the nature of design and student interaction with online learning materials.
By carefully designing authentic patient encounters through the judicious use of
appropriate media, student interactions in a medical PBL curriculum have been
enhanced.
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Chapter 7
Virtual learning in cultural studies:
matching subject content and instructional
delivery
Lee Wallace, Annamarie Jagose and Cathy Gunn
Introduction
Within the contexts of e-learning and technology-enhanced learning
environments, the potentialities of the medium of delivery offer unique
opportunities to match academic content and pedagogic form in previously
unimagined ways. Using the example of the Virtual Shopping Mall project (VSM),
this chapter will focus attention on the processes by which purpose-built
Information and Computer Technology (ICT) platforms can be developed to
activate and enhance content-specific learning. The challenge the VSM designers
set themselves was to investigate how computer-assisted learning could augment
the student’s entry-point interaction with new subject domains, in this case
contemporary cultural studies. This chapter evaluates the impact this ‘matching’
of academic content and instructional delivery has on student motivation and
their engagement of learning.
Review of the literature

Educational software design is informed by a variety of instructional theories
ranging from early behaviourist (Bloom, 1956; Merrill et al, 1991) to
contemporary constructivist (Wilson et al, 1997). While the pedagogy of the
discipline and educational level of a product will determine the most appropriate
theoretical basis, all approaches share the common objective of maximizing
learning (Somekh, 1996), and most learning environments include a mix of
mastery and constructive learning. Contemporary theories for university learning
relevant to the work described in all four chapters in this section emphasize
active, constructive and situated learning. These are variously described as Rich
Environments for Active Learning (REALs) by Grabinger and Dunlap (1995),
constructivist learning opportunities by Jonassen (1998) and authentic contexts
for situated learning by Herrington and Oliver (2000). Activation of learning
through engagement with authentic environments is discussed in some detail by
both Keppell and Baird (see Chapters 5 and 6 in this book). While the VSM is
not designed around problem solving activity such as that described by Keppell,
VIRTUAL LEARNING IN CULTURAL STUDIES 91
the underlying principle applies equally to the analytical decision making model
on which it is based. Students have ‘signposted’ access to a knowledge domain
which represents an ill-structured view of an authentic scenario they must
investigate, reach and support decisions about. The VSM scenarios also reflect
the ‘real life complexity’ that is often missing in simulated environments. In
Baird’s chapter this complexity is provided through access to real teachers in
real life situations with examples of both good and bad practice in teaching
situations. While these attributes can be promoted in any learning environment,
the ease of access as well as the sensory and interactive potential of Web-based
multimedia provides far greater opportunities for the achievement of these
‘higher level’ pedagogical aims.
Creating interactive environments

Despite common use of the term ‘interactive multimedia’, multimedia itself is not
inherently interactive. While the definition implies the presence of audio-visual
as well as text-based content, it is possible to include these multimedia features
in a product that is designed to do no more than transmit information—albeit
multisensory information—to passive users. The interactive quality of any
instructional resource is a function of the design, not the technology. A definition
of interactivity drawn from the discipline of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
focuses specifically on the relationship between the user and the technology-
based system. The basis of HCI design principles is to make the interaction,
which is defined as a function of the input required by the learner while
responding to the computer and the consequent reaction by the computer, both
meaningful and engaging (Hutchings et al, 1993; Jones et al, 1995). Basic
interaction in the form of ‘point and click’ and hyperlinked navigation is useful
for some applications such as information kiosks, shopping or booking systems.
Educational products, however, which are designed not simply to transfer
information but to extend the conceptual competency of the user, require more
complex forms of interactivity that must be indexed to the instructional strategy
employed by the application. Interactivity is a necessary and fundamental
mechanism for knowledge acquisition and the development of cognitive and
physical skills. It is no longer adequate for the work of instructional designers to
be limited to products where interactivity is trivialized to menu selection, clickable
objects or linear sequencing. Real interaction is essential to successful, effective
educational practice as well as to individual discovery (Sims, 1997). Increasing
capacity to develop and provide access to Web-based multimedia environments
supports articulation of the constructivist learning principles that underpin this
notion of interactivity. The term coined by Evans and Swain in Chapter 8 in this
book is a ‘virtual practice situation’. The development of genuinely interactive
environments, such as those described in the chapters in this Part, is necessary to
create potential for deep learning to occur within these applications.
Cognitive flexibility, motivation and game-play protocols

One of the unique qualities ofWeb-based multimedia environments is the
capacity to support multiple representations of complex domains through the
provision of hyperlinks and user choice in navigation through knowledge spaces
(Spiro and Jehng, 1990). Traditional methods of instruction have little option but
to rely on linear media. This presents few problems when the subject matter is
well structured and relatively simple. However, as complexity of content and
structure increases, greater amounts of information are lost with linear media. The
advent of random access instruction through hypertext addresses this problem
and research into the educational benefits associated with opportunities to
construct personalized views of subject domains is ongoing (Hutchings et al,
1993; Lemke, 1993).
The instructional design of educational multimedia needs also to ensure the
motivation of learners. At an operational level, Keller (1987) describes five
dimensions of motivation as:
1. interest—arousing curiosity, capturing attention;

2. relevance—connection of learning objectives to tasks and activities;
3. engagement—active participation supported by meaningful feedback;
4. expectancy—developing confidence and control;
5. satisfaction—making measurable progress, achieving specified outcomes.
A recent current in computer-assisted learning research suggests that the

developers of educational multimedia have much to learn from the design of
computer games and the modes of cognitive interactivity and imaginative
engagement they support (Johnson, 1998). Game play protocols can ‘enhance
learning while affecting the motivation and retention of knowledge and skills
positively’ so that, in an optimal scenario, gaming ‘becomes an intentional
education tool (where) the rules which govern (play) demand the development
and use of educationally valuable skills, the acquisition of important knowledge,
or exploration of a worthwhile world of experience’ (Kinikoglu andYadav,
1995). The incorporation of game features into instructional design has the
potential to enhance student motivation by amplifying aspects of challenge,
discovery and control (Johnson, 1998). These motivational cues actively
reinforce the instructional objectives of the module while game play also
provides opportunities for self-test and feedback scenarios unhampered by the
stress and anxiety associated with academic testing. Optimal learning occurs
when instructional content and motivational features are in a balanced
combination with neither dominating nor impeding the other (Kinikoglu and
Yadav, 1995).
Usability issues determining engagement of learning

A challenge to designers of multimedia educational environments is to
incorporate elements of feedback and assessment—preferably in the form of self-
assessment— that are essential to the learning process and to the promotion of
the learner’s critical analysis skills, confidence and independence. They must,
furthermore, ensure that the interactive protocols they devise are useable. Squires
and Preece (1996) stress the importance of focusing on learning design and
usability in the development of educational software. Their work in the area of
multimedia design identifies the following specific features as essential to the
usability of educational modules:
• user control;
• effective presentation of content;
• good navigation;
• feedback and progress monitoring;
• intuitive and consistent design;
• clear graphical representation;
• incorporation of useful metaphors.
Squires and Preece further identify the critical role of integration of technology-
based resources into the overall structure and assessment of courses. This dual
emphasis on good instructional design and the full incorporation of multimedia
modules within wider (and more conventional) structures of learning and
assessment is reflected in the evaluation of educational software with a focus on
both usability and integration (Draper et al, 1996).
Although the literature describes the potential of multimedia and Web-based
learning to create environments that significantly enhance learning, it has also
been noted that few implementations actually come close to achieving this
objective (Owston, 1997). The rest of this chapter describes the process of
developing the VSM, an innovative multimedia module that has realized this
potential and demonstrably enhanced learning among its users. The example of
the VSM confirms what the literature suggests, that the development of
genuinely interactive multimedia environments depends on the dovetailing of
design and evaluation as well as the productive cross-fertilizing of pedagogic
concerns and technological capacity.
Activating learning through the VSM

The VSM offers first-year cultural studies students access to a Web-based
learning environment that motivates student learning through the strategic
adoption of the architectures of computer games. The VSM adopts a hybridized
form of learning and game structures in order to erase the traditional distinction
between the spaces of pedagogy and the spaces of play and leisure. For as long
as it takes to complete the assignment task, students are narratively anchored in a

thematically coherent environment: the mall. Offering a range of sensory
experiences (animation, QTVR, acoustic cues, etc) this simulated environment is
designed to simultaneously provide the conditions for game play and situated
learning. The VSM is not itself a game but its design incorporates the narrative
structures, incremental incentives and end-directed focus of computer games to
maximize self-motivated learning in a thematically consistent virtual
environment.
Development of the VSM was motivated by a combination of belief in the
power of multimedia to support the creation of effective learning environments
and the perceived usefulness of emerging models of learning to provide an
appropriate basis for the design of such environments. Although there was little
explicit reference to educational theory at the start, articulation of the designers’
objectives in terms of contemporary learning theory increased as the project
progressed. The academic creators of the VSM concept had a deep implicit
understanding of learning issues and, over the years, had promoted effective
learning through strategies developed from an experiential rather than a
theoretical basis. This example conforms to the observation made by Taylor
(1998) about ‘early adopters’ of innovative teaching technologies being
recognized as exceptional teachers before embarking on innovations in teaching.
Initial discussion between the commissioning academics and pedagogical experts
identified the theoretical basis of the design as relating to the provision of
authentic contexts (Herrington and Oliver, 2000) and situated learning (Brown et
al, 1989).
The academics involved had initially conceived an online module in which
cultural studies students could interact with everyday scenarios related to the
presence of different characters in a shopping mall. As it happened their
preliminary design already included some of the critical characteristics of an
authentic learning environment, namely:
• authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life
(the mall);
• authentic activities (shopping);
• access to multiple roles and perspectives (a range of shoppers).
In the development and pedagogic design process they were able to extend the
module to support authentic learning in further ways. These innovations included
enabling:
• access to expert performances and the modelling of processes;

• support for the collaborative construction of knowledge;
• reflective analysis and enabling abstractions to be formed;
• the articulation of tacit knowledge as explicit knowledge;
• coaching and scaffolding to occur at critical times;
• authentic assessment of learning within tasks.
The final design of the virtual environment promoted the concept of situated
learning in manifold ways. The reflection of a ‘real life’ context was supported
by the inclusion of retail outlets and consumer items within the mall that students
would recognize and be familiar with (Country Road, The Body Shop, Borders
Books and Music, Adidas, Skechers and Airwalk).
The inclusion of a range of fully articulated real-life characters (Cyra, Lilly,
Anton) with whom students might identify anchors learning within this authentic
context and also introduces multiple perspectives to the learning process (Wilson
et al, 1997). Through interaction with theVSM, students are given practical
contexts in which to encounter relevant theories from the domain of cultural
studies and can also access the analyses of experts in the field. The interactive
nature of the module’s design ensures that students play an active role in the
learning process and so avoids the common criticism that many so-called
educational innovations are simply expensive and technologically complex
versions of transmission learning.
The realization of these fundamental principles (authentic contexts; situated
learning; an over-riding emphasis on interactivity) critically informed the design
process. In this way the development of theVSM carefully built on prior
successful initiatives in Web-based multimedia but also extended the
commissioning academics’ sense of the further possibilities of Web technology.
In addition to a strong focus on educational design for theVSM, the importance
of well-designed software that meets user needs in the most efficient way was not
underrated. Continuous evaluation during development and implementation of the
module, including the testing of a fully operational prototype, provided the
necessary checks on achievement of these objectives (Gunn, 2000). As well as
ongoing evaluation within the multidisciplinary team and with target groups of
students, expert reviews of the Software Specification Document (SSD) were
used as an objective ‘reality check’ at all phases of the project.
TheVSM scenario
A description of theVSM is now presented to illustrate how the conceptual
design attributes detailed above were implemented in the module in ways that
specifically assisted the activation of learning. The VSM is an educational
resource designed to enable the critical analysis of commodity culture. As its
name suggests, the VSM is a simulated environment, which students explore
while learning about contemporary critiques of consumer identity, and in which
they engage in situational interactions that draw on this developing skill base. The
virtual mall resembles a computer game environment insofar as it provides a
thematically consistent environment in which several different aesthetic
experiences are available, each relating to different levels of competency and
reward. The four component sections of theVSM are described in some detail
below.
Sales Pitch
The opening splash screen, with its acoustic and visual cues (a cartoon silhouette
of a skatechick, dislodged by a waterfall of fetishized commodities sliding down
the screen to a cyber-lounge soundtrack), ‘promos’ this alternate world. After
login, it is suggested the student proceed to Sales Pitch where they are inducted
into this imaginary mallscape via a 90–second animation that recalls and
explicitly cites the opening sequences of many popular computer games. The
ambient feel of the cartoon is retro-futuristic and this is taken up and continued
by visual and aural motifs throughout the entire module. On subsequent viewings
the alert student may also notice that the scenarios in the orienting cartoon
prefigure the module’s conceptual content: subcultures, resistance, fashion,
surveillance. The student then engages in a series of tasks (shopping), which
relate to the mall situation and which enable the incremental development of
both navigational and critical competency. The shopping exercise, involves
specific retail objects rather than generic ones (Airwalk sneakers or Adidas,
Skechers backless or three-stripe classic with leather upper) and so engages first
at the level of consumer desire. Once the student has committed to a purchase a
reflective protocol appears to support critical self-assessment and prompts the
student mark the elements that informed his or her choice from the given list
(gender, fashion, price, etc). Sales Pitch closes with a second sound and vision
sequence that balances the first but now includes a video-montage of a diverse
range of real people wearing their equally diverse street clothing. This photo-
gallery sequence prefigures the character-based scenarios of the assessment task,
which ask students to consider the motivations behind their own and others’
patterns of consumption. When this sequence closes, the student is free to select
and proceed to another wing of the module although it is clear that access to
Retail Therapy is dependent on the successful completion of the Quiz Zone. The
module thus encourages or allows for free-form navigation inside an overarching
narrative structure and offers an experiential equivalent to shopping itself.
Just Looking
Just Looking provides an online resource to critical concepts in cultural studies
and the critique of commodity culture. This section bundles together from a
variety of printed sources key information about consumer culture and functions
as an online encyclopaedic text for the study of consumer culture generally (see
Figure 7.1). At the system level, this resource is organized by concept or theorist
but hypertext connections encourage students to navigate the section
independently, enabling them to construct their own pathway through the subject
matter according to the line of interest they are pursuing.
Figure 7.1 Resource page with pull-down menu
This wing of the module recalls traditional qualities of contemplative

scholarship and research but learning is further augmented by the inclusion of
television news clips, documentary footage, advertisements and photographs that
illustrate the intersection of commodity culture and forms of citizenship (the
opening of New Zealand’s first shopping mall in the late 1950s; the Beatles
being welcomed to NZ in the 1960s by Maori women in traditional dress; a
1970s NZ local punk rock band and their fans dressed in bin liners and Union
Jacks; a Madonna look-alike competition staged in the late 1980s where most of
the contestants are under 14, including the single male finalist). Obviously
student learning via reading is thus enhanced by a sensory interaction, but as
these examples suggest, the engagement is enriching of the learning experience
in a number of ways, not least its ability to deepen a historical understanding of
evolutions in commodity culture.
Throughout this section, a notepad function enables students to take notes
online, in order to save them to a floppy drive, email them to themselves, print
them out or simply refer to them when they next ‘shop’ at theVSM. As well as
citing paper-based modes of learning, Just Looking also skills students in
navigational techniques needed in Retail Therapy. Here they operate for the first
time pulldown menus, a rollover glossary and video. In the larger context of
theVSM, this traditional research activity is reformulated as the accumulation of
‘knowledge-energy’ undertaken by a player/character in a computer game in
order to take on the next level of challenge or more advanced task.
Quiz Zone
The Quiz Zone comprises a self-testing gateway that enables students to amass
sufficient ‘knowledge-energy’ to undertake the module’s final challenge: Retail
Therapy. At the start of the quiz the ‘rules’ are conveyed and the student is
invited to select a prize for which they will play. Playing for a selected prize
encourages students to associate this exercise with the consumer desire of
commodity culture rather than the traditional academic process of testing
acquired knowledge. This wing of the module has a slightly spacey, lounge
sound that conveys the playfulness and ‘theatre’ of the quiz. As the student
proceeds through the quiz committing answers, the win or lose factor is
reinforced by further sound cues which accompany the ‘gain’ or ‘loss’ of pieces
of the jigsaw prize. Secondary or ‘reinforcing’ information is also provided once
an answer has been committed so that, when a student answers a particular
question, some further contextualizing dialogue appears relating to why his or
her response was correct or incorrect.
Once students have successfully answered five multi-choice questions in a row
they can then claim their prize, which comes alive through sound and animation
(the scooter turns over and drives off; the blender whirrs into action, and so on).
At this point the students can proceed to Retail Therapy or elect to stay in the
Quiz Zone longer, playing for other prizes, and working through the large and
randomly generated question bank, testing and increasing their factual
knowledge of cultural studies. The game-based learning environment functions
as a productive alternative to the more conventional and achievement-driven
pedagogies of competition and examination. The Quiz Zone also encourages a
productive feedback loop to Just Looking, to which it may also provide the
student’s first point of entry. All the answers are contained in Just Looking, and
links are provided between some correct and incorrect answers and related pages
in the resource section, the browsing of which would allow the student to retool
in the required subject matter and thus be better prepared to undertake that
question again, or a later related task.
Retail Therapy
Retail Therapy contains three real-life retail scenarios structured, in the style of
certain computer games, by character-based identification. These action-based
scenarios unfold via QTVR and other visual and audio technologies.
Students/players imaginatively engage with each character in turn and proceed
with them to explore and assess three authentic retail contexts via QTVR and other
computer technologies: Body Shop, Country Road and Borders Books and
Music. TheVSM builds on the demonstrated capacity of game play to enhance
deep learning by creating interfaces that encourage both imaginative immersion
and reflective reasoning. In relation to each location, students undertake
authentic tasks that draw on and extend the technical and cognitive skill base
Figure 7.2 Instructional protocol

they have developed in the preliminary levels of the module. The students are
initially asked to compose a profile of the character they have selected, judging
by their appearance and the contents of their bag that they are able to examine in
detail via QTVR technology. Once they have committed their assessment of this
character, their response is displayed alongside the collated responses of their
classmates and in this collaborative context they are prompted to reflect on and
revise their original answer if desired.
The students proceed to shop with this character and to encounter learning
exercises that are integral to this activity. They examine a shop window, and are
invited to select among terms that they consider to describe the window display
before working those terms into more complex sentences (see Figure 7.2). They
are then prompted to compare their elaborated description to a supplied model
answer (see Figure 7.3).
Similarly, when considering an interior shop display the students evaluate
their response in relation to three other supplied responses and must critically
evaluate all four as persuasive or unpersuasive. This process is repeated in
relation to the three characters and three store locations, although certain
‘wildcard’ activities are specific to each (an authentic CD listening post in
Borders Books and Music, which plays five different sound bites as the students
read the Borders copyrighted in-store reviews of each—Jimmy Buffet, Crowded
House, The Jam, Yo La Tengo and Smashing Pumpkins; in The Body Shop a
Figure 7.3 Reflective protocol
photographic archive of their recent billboard campaigns promoting Aboriginal

reconciliation, etc). In this manner reflective reasoning and self-directed learning
in cultural studies are supported by scenarios that ensure motivational
engagement and authentic learning.
In the Retail Therapy section of the VSM, the student actively engages, both
imaginatively (via role-play) and critically (via instructional prompts), with a
complex and realistic environment that advances reflective understanding and
encourages revision. Throughout Retail Therapy, the learning activity is
productively distributed across communicative interactions between a character
role and an authentic environment. This counterweighted combination is
designed to enhance the possibilities for situated learning in so far as the VSM’s
emphasis on narrative and thematic continuity secures the representational
context necessary for engaged actions and meaningful experience (Laurillard,
1993).
Integration and evaluation

In terms of overall integration, the VSM is designed to support students through
various aspects of the assessment for the target course. The Web-based module
essentially plots a guided pathway across the virtual space with students required
to complete specific evaluative tasks related to the shopping mall as an interface
between public culture and private subjectivity. The module is designed so

students are able to clearly identify the assessment goal (the critical mapping of
social space demonstrating an engagement with contemporary theories of
consumer subjectivity) as it is embedded in the interactive task.
The learning outcomes associated with integration of the VSM do not differ
significantly from those of the courses as they were previously taught. Rather the
intention was to add richness to the learning experience through exposure to
multiple perspectives including expert knowledge and student-generated views,
self-selection of pathways through the knowledge domain and the encouragement
of self-management throughout the process. On completion of the module students
will have developed:
• the ability to demonstrate critical knowledge;

• exploration and analysis skills;
• autonomy in learning and the ability to self-assess;
• the ability to evaluate domain-specific information and situations.
The VSM was specifically designed to support achievement of these outcomes in

the wider context of the host course. The outcome of continuous evaluation
throughout the development and implementation phases demonstrates that these
objectives are well articulated through the design and intended use of the VSM,
and that considerable success in the achievement of these objectives resulted
from its integration within the course structure.
The range of evaluative activities included expert reviews of the Software
Design Specification (SDS) document (technical and pedagogical perspectives),
student evaluation of a fully working prototype, attitude surveys, system log data
and analysis of student performance on aspects of the course covered by the
VSM. While the expert review process confirmed the relevance of the design
objectives, student attitudes and performance are considered to be the real
indicators of achievement of usability, integration and learning enhancement
objectives.
Evaluation of the prototype was designed specifically to assess:
• the use of the designed exercises by students and, whether this met with the
designers’ expectations;
• usability and functionality aspects of the site;
• the extent to which the exercises contributed to achievement of the learning
outcomes.
The methods used for data collection at this stage were:
• observation records from student use of the VSM in a timetabled computer lab
setting;
• an exit questionnaire included in the VSM site;
Table 7.1 Technical, usability and learning issues identified during prototype evaluation
• analysis of student performance related to the learning objectives targeted by

the VSM.
The observation schedule included technical, usability and learning incidents.

These data, together with that from the exit questionnaire, identified issues that
were modified in the final version of the program; see Table 7.1.
From a total of 156 responses to the exit questionnaire, it was evident that
most students found the VSM easy to move around, well structured and offering
relevant and complete information with clear instructions on how to proceed
through the program. Constructive comments were offered on issues also
identified through observation schedules confirming that some modification was
required. Most of the students who did not find navigation easy cited orientation
and lack of confidence as the reasons. On specific learning issues:
• 96 per cent of respondents reported some improvement in understanding of

the subject following a short period of interaction with the prototype;
• 73 per cent of respondents reported some improvement in ability to reflect and
revise ideas;
• 82 per cent of respondents reported some improvement in motivation. This is

further supported by student comments related to the aspects of motivation
defined in the literature review section of this chapter.
Comments on the best aspects of the program included the interactive aspects,
attractive multimedia features and convenience of access to relevant information.
These findings are entirely consistent with those reported by Baird (see
Chapter 5 in this book), and suggestive of the fact that most problems
encountered by students were either technical in nature or related to lack of
competence and confidence with computers. Both these issues should disappear
as computer and Web use increases across all disciplines and educational levels.
For a first pass with the program, it was considered an overall success. Further
evaluation of the VSM is currently being conducted to focus on specific ways
that learning has been enhanced through the introduction of the program.
Summary and conclusion

One of the challenges faced in the development of the VSM was that the
discipline of cultural studies, like many other humanities subjects, does not deal
in quantitative or testable knowledge but in interpretative commentary. The goal
was to design a module that was genuinely interactive from the student’s
perspective but did not simplify the complex skills required to frame and develop
an interpretative argument. In the final module, through a series of interactive
learning exercises that promotes both independence and self-reflexivity, the VSM
enables students to develop and, perhaps more importantly, to evaluate their own
skills of interpretation and critical argument. The demonstrated success of this
module amplifies the potential of ICT to influence teaching and learning in the
wider subject domain of cultural studies and confirms that content-specific
developments in computerassisted learning, such as the VSM represents, might
also reconfigure our wider understanding of the activation mechanisms that
trigger student learning.
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Chapter 8
Replicating practice complexities—
multimedia innovation in social work
education
Stuart Evans and Phillip Swain
Introduction
The essence of social work education is that it prepares students for professional
practice in the human services, in direct and indirect practice, policy and
community development, and advocacy, working from individual, family, group
or community perspectives. The domain of welfare and social work practice
consists of ‘the interaction between individuals and social arrangements…(that
is) the many processes and relationships by which individuals and the social
structure are produced and reproduced’ (O’Connor et al, 1995, p 9). Social work
thus focuses on the interface between the individual, family, group and
community and the structures and institutions of society. It draws together the
social, the political and the cultural influences on individual, group and
community behaviour, and as a discipline has at its core the fundamental
commitment to the pursuit and maintenance of human well-being (AASW,
1999a, Clause 1).
The pursuit of that well-being necessitates working towards more equitable
access to social, political and physical resources. It is thus critical for social work
practitioners, and those seeking to educate future practitioners, to ‘not simply
(be) seeking to adapt to the present, but also trying to anticipate the future, and to
educate students to be adaptable, flexible, and able to see possibilities beyond the
constraints of the present practice environment’ (Ife, 1997, p 26). A critical
ethical obligation of professional practice is to continue to develop competencies
across the range of frameworks and intervention strategies relevant to particular
fields and spheres of practice (AASW, 1999a, Clause 3.5; Swain, 1996)—thus the
competent practitioner needs to do more than simply understand the situation
faced by a particular client—whether individual, group or community. The
practitioner must also be able to facilitate a structural analysis of client
difficulties and to develop appropriate strategies for change with that client,
using language that has meaning for all the involved parties, and skilfully
facilitating a critical analysis of alternative strategies and sites of intervention
(Fraser and Strong, 2000). The essence of social work is, then, engagement with
both the client and the wider society and its influences or, to put it another way,
with both the micro and macro dimensions of the human experience.
Hence social work education needs to mirror the myriad practice settings into
which its students will graduate, and yet anticipate developments in those
settings. The integration of theory and practice, usually associated with fieldwork
placements, is itself a core requirement of approved social work courses of
training, (AASW, 1999b). Such integration requires that what is taught in
classrooms away from the field be as close a fit to practice reality as is possible,
but simultaneously be amenable to change to meet the contextual developments
and practice realities that may arise.
How can what is taught in the relative sterility of the classroom, even using
practitioners as teachers and role models, match the reality of the vast range of
experiences and complexities of practice in the field? This chapter outlines the
pedagogical and practical implications of an explicit attempt through the use of
multimedia to bring practice reality into the classroom experiences of social
work students, as an integral part of learning and in the preparation of students
for professional practice.
The context
Professional social work education is committed to the preparation of qualified
practitioners by provision of a teaching and learning environment that develops
knowledge, values, commitment and skills in working with people in need.
Social work graduates are expected to be informed, skilled, caring and
compassionate practitioners, who will work towards securing a more just, fair
and equitable society in which social inequalities, discrimination and
disadvantage are eliminated.
Apart from the range of interpersonal, group and community skills that
graduates are expected to demonstrate, it is an increasing expectation of even
beginning social work practitioners that they will be competent in the use of
multimedia, familiar with computer technologies and comfortable in the use of
the Internet for research and enhancement of practice skills. Such competency is
also often essential for the maintenance of the detailed records that is demanded
by professional practice, where adequate records may be critical to meeting the
accountability demands practitioners face (Royce et al, 1993). Students need to
develop such skills and confidence before beginning their practice,
simultaneously with the continuing tasks of integrating practice with classroom
teaching, and of implementing into their practice the frameworks and
intervention strategies taught for classroom purposes across the different subjects
offered within social work curricula. Across that curricula the essential functions
of the theory offered to students in micro and macro-based subjects is the
‘description; explanation; prediction; and control and management of events or
changes’ (Mullaly, 1997, p 100). However, the social work educator must also
assist students to see that practice is not composed of discreet and unrelated parts,
REPLICATING PRACTICE COMPLEXITIES 107
but of complex interactions between many individuals, structures and institutions

in society. So, too, practice education—if it is to be education for practice reality
—must mirror that complexity, but in ways that enable the student to engage
with the materials presented.
In addition, within academic circles generally and in professional education in
particular, there are strong imperatives to focus upon competency-based learning
(Evans et al, 2001; Hopkins and Cooper, 2000). For that, curricula aptly
characterized as ‘acquisition’ learning—the learning of information, facts or data,
the narrative media of lectures, print handouts, overheads and video—is
generally appropriate to ‘acquisition’ of knowledge. Arguably, however,
‘negotiation’, decision making and assessment skills (for example) are better
learnt through discursive interaction between student and teacher, and between
students, in tutorials, role-play activities and other interactive modes, such as can
be provided by multimedia developments (Evans et al, 2001; Laurillard, 1995;
Murranka and Lynch, 1999). Competency-based learning requires attention and
commitment to the development of behaviourally stated objectives,
individualized learning, to interactivity, and to student-paced learning. Social
work practice, too, is essentially not a unitary activity, as interdisciplinary
practice is central to professional practice. Hence education for practice must
emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork (Charlesworth et al,
2000, p 339).
The problem—replicating practice in the social work

classroom
Within this academic and professional context, the development of LaSWoP
(Law and Social Work Practice) at the University of Melbourne represented an
attempt to move away from separation of teaching into discrete subjects and
towards integration between content and assessment requirements of
complementary subjects. The breaking up of curricula into subjects or units,
though necessary for the practical delivery of content, is often seen by students
as reflective of different concepts and frameworks of practice, so the ideas and
concepts relevant and critical to one subject are not necessarily perceived as
having a place in another, even related, subject. Not only does this not mirror the
usual experience of practice, where professional social workers draw seamlessly
from the range of knowledge bases to which they have been exposed, but such
segregation of content further divides the twin domains of the classroom and the
field. The development of the LaSWoP program attempted to replicate the
integration of theory and practice through the integration of a theory-based
subject (interpersonal skills with individuals and families) with a practice-based
subject (the legal context of social work practice). Its development reflected a
commitment to a focus on the core professional expertise that graduates require,
along with the need to ensure that students had the opportunity to develop
decision making skills in core practice areas. This was done within a reflective
practice environment, which provided a degree of safety in anticipation of the

many high-risk and public profile settings in which even beginning graduates
often practice.
The LaSWoP project

The LaSWoP project was developed over 1999–2001 as a multimedia option
within two core subjects (in interpersonal practice and in legal practice) within
the social work degree. Funded by small university multimedia development
grants, the project has evolved to become a central practice skill development
component of the social work degree. It attempts to replicate within the relative
safety of the classroom and multimedia environment the complex and
multidisciplinary decision making with which practitioners have to become
familiar, comfortable and competent.
To achieve this was no small aim. The LaSWoP program thus incorporated:
• The development of a series of interactive multimedia resource modules, each

built around a case scenario incorporating a range of individual, familial and
systemic characteristics which the practitioner might reasonably expect to
regularly face. The program was designed to stand alongside regular
classroom teaching, so as to encourage development of decision making and
assessment skills in such complex practice areas such as child protection and
juvenile justice (the practice settings initially developed under LaSWoP).
• Other practice dimensions such as domestic violence, social security and
family law, can also be incorporated into the scenarios with which students
engage.
• A commitment to the development of teaching case materials that are
representative of contemporary thematic issues faced by social work
practitioners, including different notions of family definition and parenting,
issues of sexuality and sexual orientation, ethnicity, Aboriginality and
immigrant intergenerationality. In LaSWoP this is achieved via visual, oral
and text (refer ence) presentation of data, from which students must elicit
appropriate indicia of behaviour, relationships and the like, which are then
used in formulating their assessments and intervention strategies. Figure 8.1
shows one example of such information, presented both in text and with
visual cues, which the student practitioner must incorporate into their
completed assessment.
• An explicit commitment to the enhancement of student familiarity with
Internet use as a research tool in law, social policy, and overseas and interstate
practice developments (Evans et al, 2001, p 34). The LaSWoP project
requires students to familiarize themselves with the use of the Internet, email
and computer data programmes, and to develop the facility to craft
assessments and submit information electronically.
Figure 8.1 Father visits the children’s ward
Within LaSWoP, students function as beginning staff members in a given

practice setting (a child protection unit, a juvenile justice programme, an aged
care programme, etc). They are then assigned a ‘case’ by their supervisor in
respect of which they must utilize whatever frameworks of understanding and
information they have, to make an interpersonal person-in-situation assessment.
They also need, over a notional period of time (a five-day period was used in
the first two scenarios, but the days over which the scenario develops could be
lengthened or shortened) to reach a conclusion as to an appropriate legal course
of action and outcome. This must be done within the confines and
requirements of the relevant law and with reference to the protocols and practice
requirements of the appropriate jurisdiction. In making their assessments and
recommending an outcome, students have access to a bank (library) of computer-
based information and resources, to material presented in classroom-based
course teaching, and to whatever they can locate through their own Internet
research. They can also draw upon the situational and contextual information
provided through LaSWoP about the particular agency, network and community
setting in which the agency to which they are attached is located. The LaSWoP
program allows the student-practitioner to make and edit case notes and
preliminary assessments, and reports for both agency and court use, and prompts
him or her to draw upon information from a range of other professional
frameworks, or approaches or practitioners.
Example: Has a paediatrician seen the child? Have you sought an opinion
as to how the injury occurred?
As the tasks for each day are completed, more information becomes available
and new information sources are introduced as the notional ‘days’ develop. The
depth or paucity of the information can be manipulated by teaching staff—case
notes can be incomplete or irrelevant, or staff may be unavailable in actual
practice to expand upon or clarify what their assessments might have been. Often
the practitioner must rely upon the best information that is available, rather than
what might ideally have been sought, in making an assessment.
A key critical interactive component of LaSWoP is that students have access
to other ‘players’ within the particular practice setting, from whom they can seek
advice or further information via email. These ‘players’ could be other
professionals within the particular agency, from other agencies within the
relevant network, or colleagues with whom the practitioner has a line or
accountability relationship, such as a supervisor or legal adviser. These key
players add to the information from the practitioner by providing either
computer-generated responses to frequently asked questions or by information in
response to particular prompts. By allowing teaching staff to take particular roles,
however, it is also possible to provide individualized responses in real time
through email. This replicates the supervisory and information supports that the
beginning practitioner ought to expect from such persons as supervisor, other key
professionals working in the particular setting (the paediatrician and charge nurse
in the hospital setting, the probation officer or school year coordinator in a
juvenile justice setting, etc), legal advisers, and the like.Thus the capacity of the
LaSWoP program to be ‘self-authoring’ allows—within the limits of availability
and time!—the teacher-practitioner to respond to the individual needs of each
student, rather than attempting to anticipate electronically the information needs,
beginning competencies and-learning styles of the student cohort as a group. Not
only this, but the self-authoring capacity of LaSWoP allows for additional key
personnel to be added to a scenario at any time (for example, a family support
worker in another agency) with whom the student can then interact via email,
just as would be possible (within ethical and practical limits) for the practitioner.
Alternatively, if desired, a new piece of information can be introduced for students
to consider, even while the programme is running (so, for example, in a hospital
setting a new assessment by a doctor of a child at risk could be introduced into
the scenario), or personnel can be withdrawn (the charge nurse is ill and so no
longer available to clarify her case notes) or introduced (a new speech pathologist
has been appointed and takes a different view of the appropriate assistance
required by the family). Students can also be allocated to small learning groups
to enhance their interactive learning opportunities.
In summary, LaSWoP has attempted to support student learning by mirroring
the reality and complexity of social work practice through providing students
with an interactive case-based simulation incorporating:
• multiple virtual day case evolution;

• the capacity to receive and respond to incoming system and email messages;
• the stimulus of learning ‘prompts’;

• the capacity to interact with peers;
• the opportunity of email contact with teaching staff;
• the opportunity of email contact with other characters within the scenario;
• access to files, resources, guides, exemplars, etc;
• support and advice regarding report and assignment writing;
• links to other Web-based resources.
The response—strengths and limitations of interactive

technology
The initial development of LaSWoP—and continuing maintenance and further
development to ensure the retention of cur rent practice accuracy and relevance—
took and is taking a great deal of time. This is particularly so as the ‘authors (of
the LaSWoP project) were simultaneously not only educators but also
researchers, software co-developers, practitioners and field supervisors’ (Evans et
al, 2001, p 32). University contract and copyright issues regarding the ownership
of the product (that is, the self-authoring scenario development potential of
LaSWoP) remains complicated. The time taken and the costs involved (both
direct, in software development, and indirect, in commitment of time to the
project) were far greater than anticipated. As Morris and Naughton (1999) note,
the costs of both initial development and ongoing maintenance are significant
and often underestimated in these developments.
The project confirmed the considerable student differences in beginning
competencies, comfort and familiarity with computer and Internet technology,
highlighting that the ‘paradox of interactive media is that being a user-control
medium the learner expects to have control, and yet a learner does not know
enough to be given full control’ (Laurillard, 1995, p 185). Despite this and the
inevitable concerns associated with software and hardware incompatibility, the
project has received very strong affirmation from students. In 2000–01 approxim-
ately two-thirds of the social work student cohort chose to undertake LaSWoP as
part of their participation in the two subject areas that the project incorporated.
The evaluation of the project in 2000–01 showed that students clearly valued the
diversity and depth of practice perspectives available to them, the attempt to
replicate (more closely) the realities of practice, the explicit linking of theory and
practice, and the opportunity to practise skills (in making assessments, in
preparing court reports, in summarizing evidence coherently in the light of
legislative requirements and criteria) which were seen to be directly relevant to
practice. In addition, students greatly appreciated the study economies available
through the combining of subjects, readings and assessment tasks. They
responded positively to the link provided through LaSWoP between interpersonal
practice assessment and the demands of situational context and time:
Example: What is happening in this family? What this family needs is not
available for a month, but I have to make a recommendation in a week!
There were—and continue to be—costs and difficulties associated with this

important development. Apart from time factors, the exponential development of
hardware and software has meant that developments at the forefront of available
technology will, almost as soon as testing and implementation are completed, be
at least partially superseded by new technological developments. Students also
bring with them a variety of technological knowledge and resources, and will be
considerably disadvantaged if unable to participate in programs such as LaSWoP
if only those with the most up-to-date hardware and software could do so.
Hence, for example, LaSWoP does not to this point include video streaming or
audio information, although visual information is available in each scenario.
Students are often working with outmoded hardware, often from home or outside
of the access hours for university-based computer laboratories. In the absence of
funding for system upgrades for such students the computer-based resources
offered to them must be compatible with what they have, or some will be
disadvantaged and excluded from these learning opportunities.
For the authors, the attempt to replicate the access expectations of real practice
proved very time-consuming. While email access was not offered to students 24
hours a day, student expectations of access meant that replies from the various
‘roles’ undertaken by the authors through email contact (as senior social worker,
legal adviser, and other roles) could not be delayed for more than a day or so
without considerable anxiety on the part of students. A large cohort of students,
undertaking the project over several weeks at their own pace, meant an
unprecedented level of email activity associated with the project over most of the
relevant teaching period —with, of course, more pressing and frequent demands
from the less confident and less competent students. A clear indication to
students as to their access to the support persons in each scenario, and of the
likely delays in replies to requests for information and assistance, is critical—and
even then some student concern cannot be avoided. Like the student-practitioner
who writes the court report at 4 am who cannot expect the legal adviser to be
available until the next working day, so those undertaking LaSWoP cannot
always expect advice to be a few keystrokes away.
Critical attributes of multimedia developments within

social work education
If learning in social work is to be enhanced and made to mirror and represent
practice, then attention to several critical attributes is essential. How the LaSWoP
project attempted to deal with these attributes is important in reflecting upon its
adequacy as part of a professional practice-based education process.
First, case materials and exemplars utilized within educational processes must
be authentic, relevant and current. Case scenarios must be reflective of current
practice realities but, as shown in Figure 8.1, the advantage of interactive

authoring is that text and other content can be easily replaced or amended to
meet developments in practice—even those that occur while the program is
running with a particular group of students. In social work and similar disciplines
prerequisite experience and concurrent placement opportunities mean that
students have a ready point of comparison for university-based teaching
materials that are out of date. They will quickly identify (and comment upon)
case and course materials that no longer reflect the practice, policy or
organizational realities in the field. The organization that has merged with
another, or that no longer exists, the practice setting that has been reorganized
into new units of service delivery, the practitioner titles (and roles) that have
been modified, the policy arrangement or legislative provision that are known to
have been amended, will be likely to be known to at least some students, many
of whom will already have some practice experience when they commence their
social work education. Unless teaching materials reflect such developments
students will quickly identify that the materials presented to them might have
been relevant and current in the past, but are no longer so.
If case materials are to be current and authentic, it is imperative that they be
developed (and maintained over time) with the active participation of the
practitioners who are most familiar with them. Even the academic with extensive
practice experience, but who is no longer working actively in a particular field of
practice, will quickly develop romanticized or unrealistic notions of current
practice in those fields. In the LaSWoP example, each case scenario has been
developed in close consultation with practitioners from the various disciplines
represented in the examples used. Current practice guidelines, manuals of
procedures, established inter-agency protocols and acknowledged policies
formed the underpinning of the case examples. Where possible these resources
were formally incorporated into the case examples themselves, or were provided
through direct online access. This, too, replicated the frequent experience of
many practitioners who rely upon computer or online access to agency protocols
and manuals of procedures:
Example: Why is this matter to be referred to the relevant child protection

authority? Because first, there are legislative requirements (check the
relevant legislation in your State—click here) supported by agency protocols
and working agreements. (You should read the Agency-Hospital protocol—
click here.)
Just as the new or inexperienced practitioner should in practice be able to access

the relevant manual from the agency manager’s office, or by asking a colleague
or supervisor what the agency expectations are, or by seeking information from a
library or electronic database, so the multimedia representation of practice needs
to incorporate such opportunities. Given that more and more of practice involves
the use of email as a communication medium, the potential for classroom-based
interactive multimedia to replicate practice in the same way is high. The key is to
ensure that the current realities of practice are replicated, and here close
collaboration with the field is essential.
Multimedia developments, particularly where self-authoring is possible (as in
LaSWoP) have a distinct advantage over fixed modes of case delivery (the
written document or text, for example). With self-authoring and virtual case
evolution, data, relationships, titles, roles, availability, relevance and
completeness of information and the like, can be redeveloped between semesters
of teaching, or even during the time when a particular student cohort is utilizing
the program, if necessary. In the LaSWoP program, the nature of repeated (and
clearly appropriate) student email enquiries seeking expert orthopaedic
information in a case where a child showed some evidence of repeated fractures,
suggested the addition to the scenario of a new role. Hence the introduction to
the scenario of the hospital orthopaedic surgeon, who announced his
‘involvement’ to student practitioners via an email file note indicating that the
request by the social work staff for an orthopaedic assessment had been noted,
and that this would be undertaken within 48 hours, after which a report on the
child would be placed on the hospital file. This new role introduction was both
relevant and reflective of what would occur in practice in a major hospital setting
where child abuse concerns were at issue.
Self-authoring multimedia allows ‘staff’ to go off after their roster ends, or when
the weekend comes, or to return to work unexpectedly when someone is ill. It
lets them write sloppy, unprofessional, detailed or minimal case notes—as also
occurs in practice from time to time—requiring the student practitioner to seek
clarifications of meaning, or evidence, or the basis upon which apparent
conclusions are drawn. Similarly, particularly in settings where staff are rostered,
time limits can be built into scenarios to reflect the demands of practice:
Example: Too busy to clarify with the Charge Nurse what her case note
meant? Sorry, she’s off duty for three days.
In this example, the social work report that is due will have to be prepared
without any additional information this particular professional might have been
able to give. Again this is reflective of practice reality—people do get ill, take
leave, not reply to email messages, or reply with limited or irrelevant
information.
Secondly, multimedia components of social work education must maintain the
integration of theory and practice and contribute to the development of beginning
practitioner expertise. The primary site of practice learning for student social
workers is, arguably, the field placement where under skilled and accessible
supervision they are exposed to what practice is really like. The students must be
challenged to draw upon information sources relevant to the particular practice
setting—the specialist medical report in the hospital setting—but to then apply to
the information provided the frameworks and disciplinary understanding

acquired through professional education.
A key task of professional education is to integrate what occurs in the field
with what is offered to the student in the classroom—otherwise practice becomes
no more than ill-informed (if well intended) intervention based on the
individual’s unique but ungrounded sense of what might be appropriate in a
particular situation. In part, such theory-practice integration is made more
possible by the very currency and relevance of the practice examples used for
teaching purposes, as noted above. In the LaSWoP program, this integration was
enhanced and emphasized through the key roles of ‘senior social worker’ and
‘legal adviser’ taken by teaching staff, whose task was to both direct students to
appropriate information sources and also to foster critical reflection upon their
practice and those of others presented in the scenarios. The use within the
LaSWoP project of reflective diary and file entries, which the student-practitioner
could edit, provided a stimulus for better understanding of both practice and
personal responses to the case materials presented. Enabling subject teachers to
view and contribute to these reflective entries further fostered a critical
environment where practice and theory were seen as two sides of the same coin,
rather than as separate spheres of reality.
Thirdly, response systems need to be timely, at least to the extent of mirroring
the time constraints likely to be actually encountered in practice:
Example: ‘Remember that the case is set for tomorrow afternoon in the
Children’s Court. Your report must be logged by midday.’
The difficulty, as noted above, is that a central characteristic of both email and
multimedia is speed—the email arrives moments after it has left the sender. The
student-practitioner undertaking a case assessment late at night or at weekends
(as students are likely to do, given the competing demands of employment, study,
family and personal lives which almost all must somehow balance), needs to be
reminded that responses to queries will be timely but not necessarily immediate.
In the LaSWoP example, the understanding was that email queries would be
checked at least once each day during the week, but not always outside regular
business hours (although, given that one case involved rostered staff at a hospital,
a late email from a registrar or charge nurse finalizing case notes before the end
of a shift would not have been inappropriate). Nevertheless, even with this
limitation, student demand for immediacy of response did place considerable
pressure on teaching staff to be more available than would be the practice reality,
with both time (and, so, cost) implications for all those involved:
‘Guided discovery’ relies upon readily available teacher input to guide,

advise, to respond to uncertainties, to comment on progress, and to offer
explanations. This accessibility is the richest mode of learning but, of
course, the most expensive, requiring both the intimate involvement of the
teacher, and the ‘teacher-constructed world’ (Evans et al, 2001, p 38).
Pressures for immediate response and access to information became increasingly

the case as the time demands built into the scenarios to reflect the realities of
practice (‘your court report is due by the end of the week’) became more
pressing —but this too reflects what is likely to be the practitioner experience of
working with limited resources of information and time.
Fourthly, multimedia educational systems need to recognize, take account of
and value the differential attributes (life and employment experiences,
qualifications, interests and preferred modes of engagement with learning
materials), which different students bring to the task of learning and
experiencing. Social work education is characterized by a diverse student
population in terms of age, previous educational experience across a range of
disciplines, cultural background, experience of tertiary study, and familiarity
with computers and the Web. Within LaSWoP, the capacity for interactive self-
authoring meant that the system was able to respond, on the one hand, to the
student who is naïve in the use of a computer:
Example: ‘Unsure what to do? Try starting with… Still not sure? Make an
appointment to see your tutor.’
and on the other, to the student who is already experienced in practice and
reduces what had been anticipated to be a task requiring several hours of work
over several sessions, to a brief engagement and generation of outcomes based
on previous experience:
Example: ‘Have you carefully read all the reports available to you? Don’t
just follow the guidelines—the Magistrate will expect you to canvass ALL
the possible outcomes, not just those you are familiar with or which you
most frequently utilize.’
The interactive and self-authoring nature of LaSWoP meant that both extremes
of response could be accommodated, by differential email responses to the
individual student. Thus the more experienced student-practitioner could be
prompted to question the basis of apparent wisdom derived from past practice
experience and to consider new or unfamiliar approaches to (for example) an
assessment task, while the inexperienced or unconfident new practitioner could
be gently encouraged to complete the required task on a step-by-step basis, with
affirmation along the way, until greater confidence developed.
Conclusions
Social work’s greatest strength has been described by Ife (1997, p 159) as ‘its
ability to ground its understandings and its practice in the reality of the oppressed
and the disadvantaged’. In order to support and optimize learning opportunities
in social work, teaching materials and the formal educational environments must
reflect and engender that reality by incorporating the realities of practice—in its
acknowledgment and use of approaches and frameworks of understanding, its
essentially interdisciplinary nature, its basis in networks of groups and agencies,
and the time and other constraints that impact upon practice.
Although risk and uncertainty are key characteristics of social work practice
(Camilleri 1999), and so need to be elements of the practice to which students
are introduced, students also need to be able to step into practice in a controlled
way, with access to learning supports and advice, and with the opportunity to
make mistakes without facing the potentially serious repercussions of errors in
practice (Swain, 1996). With careful development, attention to the demands of
particular practice settings, and a commitment of resources to development and
maintenance of relevant practice-based materials, use of interactive multimedia
has shown through such developments as LaSWoP that it has great potential to
supplement classroom-based learning and to reproduce the vagaries of direct
interpersonal practice.
References
Australian Association of Social Workers (1999a) Code of Ethics, AASW, Canberra

Australian Association of Social Workers (1999b) Guidelines for Accreditation, AASW,
Canberra
Camilleri, P (1999) Social work and its search for meaning: theories, narratives and
practices, in Transforming Social Work, eds B Pease and J Fook, Allen and Unwin,
Sydney
Charlesworth, S, Turner, J N and Foreman, L (2000) Disrupted Families: The law,
Federation Press, Sydney
Evans, S, Petrakis, M and Swain, P (2001) Experiencing practice complexities via
computer: multimedia innovation in social work education, New Technology in the
Human Services, 13 (3–4), pp 31–42
Fraser, H and Strong, D (2000) Teaching structural social work skills to beginning
students, Advances in Social Work and Welfare Education, 3, pp 27–36
Hopkins J and Cooper L (2000) The competency approach, in Fieldwork in the Human
Services, eds L Cooper and L Briggs, Ch 5, Allen and Unwin, Sydney
Ife, J (1997) Rethinking Social Work, Longman, Sydney
Laurillard, D (1995) Multimedia and the changing experience of the learner, British
Journal of Educational Technology, 26 (3), pp 179–89
Morris, D and Naughton, J (1999) The future’s digital, isn’t it? Some experience and
forecasts based on the Open University’s Technology Foundation course, Systems
Research and Behavioural Science, 16 (2), p 147
Mullaly, B (1997) Structural Social Work, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Ontario
Murranka, P A and Lynch, D (1999) Developing a competency-based fundamentals of
management communication course, Business Communication Quarterly, 62 (3), p 9
O’Connor, I, Wilson, J and Setterlund, D (1995) Social Work and Welfare Practice (2nd
edn), Longman, Sydney
Royce, D, Dhooper, S and Rompf, E (1993) Field Instruction: A guide for social work
students, Longman, Sydney
Swain, P (1996) Social workers and professional competence: a last goodbye to the
Clapham omnibus?, Torts Law Journal, 4, pp 41–59
Part 3
Providing socialization support

Chapter 9
Technology and second language learning
through socialization
Robert Debski
Introduction
The past several decades have seen a significant shift in the conceptualization of
language. From perceiving the laws of language as an external phenomenon in
and of itself worth study, through positing them in the human mind, we have
come to understand language as closely interwoven with society and social
semiotic systems. Our understanding of learning has undergone a similar change.
Learning a second language (L2) no longer seems to be about memorization of
rules and discrete language items. Increasingly, it is perceived as a two-tiered
phenomenon: individual and cognitive on the one hand, and socially-situated,
collaboratively-constructed and inseparably connected with other semiotic
systems such as gesture, customs and rituals, and social and cultural artefacts on
the other. Consequently, there has been an evident shift from the learner as
individual to the learner as a member of the social group actively involved in
goal-oriented activity and in co-constructing the learning process. Socialization
has become a desired feature of the L2 classroom and a viable area of learning
research.
Applications of information and communications technology (ICT) in L2
learning have also undergone an evolution, both responding to and assisting the
advancement of current beliefs about language learning and classroom practices.
The use of computers to dispatch information has first been complemented by
approaches underscoring exploration and discovery by students, and more
recently by instructional practices involving electronic social interaction in
simulated (Murphy and Gazi, Chapter 12, this volume) and naturalistic settings.
In fact, social computing (Debski et al, 1997) has probably been the single most
important factor changing L2 learning and teaching practices in recent time.
Second language students are asked to communicate and collaborate in the target
language with overseas partners, to search for information on the Internet, create
Web projects and share them with online communities.
Despite the growing popularity and intuitive appeal, the position of computer-
supported collaborative learning is however still far from settled and exactly what
TECHNOLOGY AND SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING 121
and how students learn through such practices is still unclear (Koschmann, 1996;
Koschmann et al, 2002). The critics for instance point out the reliance of that
approach on individual student and teacher variables (Debski and Gruba, 1998)
and the student anxiety caused by technological instruments (Lewis and Atzert,
2000). The proponents argue that computer-supported collaborative learning can
make L2 learning purposeful and meaningful, as networked machines help
learners participate in social environments where their L2 can serve as a vehicle
for carrying out ‘collective intentionality’ (Searle, 1995). ICT can also help build
learning environments in which the process of reconstruction of social reality and
identity in the L2 can be carried out. Taking these premises as a point of
departure, the aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how technology can
effectively support various second language acquisition (SLA) approaches that
feature social interaction as an important vehicle of language learning.
The subsequent part of this chapter presents several SLA concepts
illuminating the role of social interaction in the L2 classroom. These notions are
viewed here as complementary, addressing the central issue at different levels
and from differing standpoints, and together better capable of explaining the role
of social interaction for language development. This is followed by a description
of the Project-Oriented Computer-Assisted Language Learning (PrOCALL)
project conducted in the School of Languages at the University of Melbourne
(Debski, 2000), taking social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) as its theoretical
base and exploiting social computing as a medium of L2 learning. In the final
part, several themes explaining the significance of modern technology for
situating language learning in social contexts are discussed. In summary, the
chapter provides evidence that ICT can facilitate L2 pedagogy based on socially-
oriented SLA theory by:
• enabling activity functioning as a catalyst for social interaction;

• supporting negotiation of meaning in communication;
• increasing learner audience awareness and agency;
• aiding development of cross-cultural skills;
• changing power relations;
• supporting identity development.
Examples drawn from various studies of the PrOCALL classrooms are used to
illustrate these themes. Where possible, this evidence is triangulated with the
results of other studies.
Socialization and language learning

Different perspectives on second language acquisition accentuate the importance
of social interaction for L2 learning; these are discussed below.
122 PROVIDING SOCIALIZATION SUPPORT
Interactionist SLA
Interactionist SLA emphasizes the significance of environments supporting the
resolution of communicative breakdowns and negotiation of meaning for
promoting learning (Gass, 1997; Long, 1983; Pica, 1994; Swain and Lapkin,
1998). Negotiation of meaning occurs when learners engaged in interactions
experience difficulties in understanding each other (Long, 1983). Speakers resort
to it in order to put the exact communicative message across (Swain and Lapkin,
1998). This concept is derived from the input hypothesis (Krashen, 1981, 1985)
stating that learner output modified through negotiation of meaning provides
comprehensible input to learners as well as feedback on their production (Gass,
1997). Thus, negotiation of meaning assists learners in producing
comprehensible input and output, and draws their attention to their inter-
language and to different target language forms (Gass, 1997). Learner attention or
‘noticing’ also facilitates learning (Schmidt, 1990). The concepts of noticing and
negotiation of meaning bring together the cognitive and the social to form the
foundation of the prevailing view of second language learning.
More recent interactionist positions stress the significance of naturalistic
social discourse for creating situations that abound in opportunities to learn
through negotiation of meaning and noticing. L2 learning tasks should thus
provide opportunities for consensus building, planning, discussing controversy
and outcomes, and all linguistic functions present in naturalistic goal-oriented
discourse. An important underlying assumption is that learning is facilitated by
use of the target language in content-rich and purposeful ways while an active
awareness of the forms and functions of language used is maintained (Schmidt,
1990). Such opinions close the gap between interactionist SLA theory and views
of SLA inspired by sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978, 1981; Wertsch, 1985).
Socio-interactive SLA theory

Socio-interactive SLA theory is a more holistic perspective on L2, one that
includes consideration of the learning task as well as of the complexity of
individual and social conditions surrounding it. According to the socio-
interactive approach, L2 learner constructs first emerge at the intra-
psychological, social level supported by the process of scaffolding (Bruner, 1975)
and only later at the inter-psychological platform through the processes of
internalization. To better explain interaction, researchers have thus begun to
study how L2 learners collaborate with one another as they work on language
learning tasks and projects. Studies demonstrate that learners working
collaboratively can guide themselves through linguistically complex tasks that
would be far too complex for them if they were working individually (Donato,
1994; Ohta, 1995). In such a view, the boundaries between individual interacting
learners become somewhat unclear, as they produce jointly owned language in
response to goal-oriented activity. Language development can be viewed as a

form of gradual socialization among individuals.
By drawing onVygotsky’s (1978) assumption that mental activity is organized
through socially constructed artefacts, socio-interactive SLA emphasizes the
significance of collaborative, goal-oriented learning. Interacting groups of
learners generate contingencies or affordances (van Lier, 2000) that can be
turned into learning that is socially situated and meaningful. Socio-interactive
approaches also draw our attention to how social activity is mediated by various
tools. Internet mediation thus not only carries learning activity, but also interacts
with it by changing learning conditions. Researchers argue that Internet
mediation changes student speech behaviour, for example by affecting power
relations and creating in them a greater sense of freedom to express controversial
opinions (Thorne, 1999; Warschauer, 1996) or removing barriers caused by
shyness (Kern, 1995).
Van Lier (2000) allies socio-interactive SLA with ecological theory. His
approach presumes that language cannot be reduced to a system of simpler
phenomena, since at every level of linguistic complexity new properties emerge
that cannot be broken down into those of lower levels. It also assumes that the
social activity of the learner does not facilitate learning but in fact constitutes
learning. Consequently, language learning is not a process of representing
linguistic objects in the brain. We do not ‘own’ language, we learn to live in
it.The ecological perspective on SLA ‘places a strong emphasis on
contextualizing language into other semiotic systems, and into the contextual
world as a whole’ (van Lier, 2000, p 259). What ramifications does this theory
have for the creation and study of language learning environments? Language is
learnt in semiotically rich environments such as natural social contexts. Such
environments will provide opportunities for meaningful linguistic action and help
language emerge out of semiotic activity involving language, social norms,
gesture, artistic creativity, etc.
SLA, acculturation and identity

Social and cultural distance between the learner and the target language group is
regarded as a predictor of success in L2 learning. Traditionally, learner
motivation and personality interact with this predictor, either inhibiting or
enhancing the learning process (Schumann, 1976, 1978). Peirce (1995) argues
that social distance is a phenomenon that is dynamically constructed, and she
considers power relations as a decisive factor in this process. She also holds that
SLA needs to develop a concept of the language learner as having a complex
social identity that must be understood with reference to larger inequitable social
structures.
Figure 9.1 The Global Learning Environment (GLEn)
Networked, project-oriented L2 classrooms

The PrOCALL project restructured units within eight language courses at the
University of Melbourne to integrate large-scale projects created and published
by students in a technologically rich environment. Within these units, project-
oriented negotiations, online research, computer-mediated communication
(CMC) with local and overseas partners, and Web creation and publishing
replaced or complemented syllabus-driven role-playing, composition writing and
discussion. Supported by the Global Learning Environment (Figure 9.1), this
transformation involved classes in Chinese, ESL, French, German, Indonesian,
Japanese and Russian.
The motivation for the PrOCALL project can be traced back to the early
teaching experiments conducted by John Barson at Stanford University. Barson
organized a series of inter-university collaborations involving French students at
Stanford, Harvard and the University of Pittsburg (Barson, 1991; Barson et al,
1993). Those early implementations of computer-supported project-oriented L2
learning relied on several fundamental principles:
• Engaging students in broad-scale collaborative activity is conducive to

language learning. Repeated opportunities to link communicative acts to
meaningful situations will result in enhanced language retention and
availability for application in similar real-life situations.
• Learning must be meaningful to the learner. Students must take responsibility

for designing, selecting and executing their tasks. Interaction in an
environment where students manage their own affairs contributes to language
learning.
• In a project-oriented CALL class, the role of the teachers is to initiate activity
and interaction, and to help students sustain a level of engagement leading to
the successful completion of work.
• The syllabus is conceived as a schedule of activity, which is negotiated and
sensitive to the relationships evolving between the learners in the context of
project work.
• Technology has an important role to help implement the proposed model by
extending the boundaries of the classroom, which are now limited only by
network configurations, and customizing access to and through learning
material by hyperlinking and guided browsing. (Barson et al, 1993)
The PrOCALL implementation was accompanied by an evaluation/research

project conducted by an independent evaluator, postgraduate students and the
teachers themselves. The research focused on a variety of themes, such as
patterns of target language use (Tanaka, 2000), management of student anxiety
(Lewis and Atzert, 2000), influence of the Internet on student interpretation of
the target language culture (Andrews, 2000), development of linguistic skills
(Ewing, 2000), and learner factors influencing successful uptake of socio-
collaborative CALL (Smith, 2000). Although most of the PrOCALL classes have
undergone significant re-creation (Debski, 2000), overall the project has had a
positive impact on second language study at Melbourne University and project-
oriented learning with technology is still part of several curricula.
Smaller-scale ‘sociocollaborative’ (Meskill, 1999) projects have in recent
years been conducted by other teachers and researchers in all parts of the world.
Barson and Debski (1997) report on a project where students of Polish at
Stanford and Jagiellonian University, Poland, collaborate using email to create
Web pages about their respective campuses. Kubota (1999) describes a semester-
long project in which students work in dyads to write research papers on
Japanese culture, later published on the Web with images and links. Zhao (1996)
designs an online magazine with his students. Kramsch et al (2000) analyse
authorship online in a study of Hong Kong immigrants in California high
schools. Makalapua and Hawkins (1997) discuss the significance ofWeb-based
project-oriented L2 learning for the Hawaiian revitalization programme at the
University of Hawaii.
L2 learning through socialization enabled by technology

This part of the chapter describes the socialization features of L2 interaction
observed in the PrOCALL classrooms. The focus is on how various technologies
interacted with L2 learning by supporting negotiation of meaning, the use of
Table 9.1 Frequency of rhetorical relationships arising from classroom discourse (Based
on Ewing, 2000)
rhetorical structures, practice of literacy in forms specific to the target culture,

changing power relations and impacting identity development.
Web-based projects as catalysts for social interaction

Ewing (2000) discusses the potential of project-oriented work with technology to
provide students with an environment where they can use and develop linguistic
skills in Indonesian that are not available in conventional classrooms. He
records, transcribes and codes discourse generated by students working on
computer-based projects and contrasts it with interaction transpiring a
conventional teacher-led classroom, where introduction of material/problem is
followed by a discussion. The most striking differences in his comparison are the
rhetorical moves in the PrOCALL and conventional classrooms (Table 9.1).
These rhetorical moves arise when hearers or readers perceive a relation between
two units of a discourse, such as elaboration or cause (Mann and Thompson,
1986).
The feature of ‘elaboration’, where concepts in one part of the interaction are
further specified in another part, was the most frequent rhetorical move in the
conventional, lecture/discussion classroom. Ewing attributed this to the
controlled progression of interaction in the conventional classroom, expressed as
a series of elaborations used to build on what has been said previously. On the
other hand, the distribution of rhetorical features in the PrOCALL classroom
discourse was more balanced, with all the rhetorical moves except for
‘elaboration’ ‘more present’ in this setting. This greater range of rhetorical
features presumably better resembles naturalistic activity-oriented interaction,
although it is still unclear to what extent it can be attributed to the catalytic
presence of computers (cf Piper, 1986; Seedhouse, 1995).
It is quite evident however that collaborative Web page creation requires the
use of complex interaction, described by van Lier as ‘and dynamic’. In such
interaction, to use his description of social interaction at the computer, ‘gestures,
pictures and objects all blend with language in the communicative context, and
even first language can be seen as a semiotic system that supports emerging
second language use’ (van Lier, 2000, p 256; see also Brooks et al, 1997; Nathan,
2000). This remark allows seeing in a somewhat different light the extensive use
of English in the PrOCALL classrooms, a feature often considered as
problematic and running counter to the principles of project-oriented CALL
(Debski, 2000). More research is required on the role of the first language for
second language development in PrOCALL situations.
Negotiation of meaning in computer-mediated

communication
In her study of the patterns of target language use in a Japanese class
participating in the PrOCALL project, Tanaka (2000) describes instances of
negotiation of meaning and peer correction. In this class, a Web discussion forum
was set up for the Australian students to communicate with partners in Japan and
discuss issues relevant to their Web-based projects. Negotiation of meaning in
the target language was observed in social interactions around computers as well
as on the screen. The excerpt in Table 9.2 is from a discussion that took place on
the Web forum between SA, a native Japanese speaker (NS), and AN, a non-
native speaker (NNS) in Australia, working on a project on martial arts.
A lot is going on in this short interaction. Negotiation of meaning and learning
occur at lexical, pragmatic and cross-cultural levels. First, the NNS uses an
incorrect word in Japanese for ‘stereotype’ (l). The NS does not understand the
word or perhaps understands it but prompts the NNS to use the correct form (4).
This triggers the NNS to correct the word (5) and to provide an extensive
explanation of what he means by it. The NNS also reflects on the different
meanings of the phrases ‘significance of martial arts’ and ‘image of martial arts’
and on how this may have led to the misunderstanding (6). The students also
manage to explain to one another the meaning of martial arts in Japan and
Australia (2, 3). Throughout this interaction, the learners prompt themselves by
asking questions and expressing different opinions provoking discussion (4, 6, 8).
The medium, by virtue of being asynchronous and written, assists the students in
providing thoughtful and focused responses (Sengupta, 2001). Interactions such
as these are evidence that negotiation of meaning, considered a positive
condition of SLA, can be effectively supported by asynchronous computer-
mediated communication (Blake, 2000; Sotillo, 2000; Toyoda and Harrison,
2002).
Table 9.2 Excerpt from a Web forum interaction between a native (NS) and a non-native
(NNS) Japanese speaker (English translation) (Based on Tanaka, 2000)
Audience awareness and agency

Goal-oriented L2 language use was the cornerstone principle of the PrOCALL
classrooms. How exactly to realize this guideline, however, was largely left to
the individual classrooms and students. A number of students embarked on
personally meaningful and motivating projects oriented towards electronic
communities on the Web. Student audience awareness emerged as a strong
theme in the data collected during the PrOCALL project, although the student
projects were directed towards different audiences ranging from the global Web
audience to family members and friends in Australia and overseas. This is
illustrated by many student interviews:
‘I did find that writing Web page is totally different from writing normal
Japanese essays so I had to change the style of writing so that it would be
interesting to the reader…’ (Ai, Japanese class)
‘We had to try to find various bits of information and relate it back to our
topic and with that we created our own Web site which can, hopefully,
be used by other people around the world. I definitely think that our Web
site could be useful for a lot of people studying history.’ (Mike, German
class)
‘I’ve got friends in Japan as well and it’s nice to show them the page.
They are friends I made in Japan.’ (Louise, Japanese class)
The fact that Web writing is done for a real audience was on a couple of
occasions brought home to the students in a sudden and somewhat surprising
way. In 1998, a German class received an email from an irritated policeman in
response to a student’s Web page containing allegations of xenophobia in the
German police force. Two years later, another PrOCALL class received an email
from an irate Web citizen with a threat that he would sue one of the students for
plagiarism. The citizen was appeased by the student, the author was given proper
credit for his work, but the ethical issue ofWeb publishing became a matter of
discussion for the whole class. Apart from instilling in students the feeling of
authorship, contingencies like these also created opportunities for second
language use in response to authentic communicative needs (van Lier, 2000). An
important task for teachers is to create situations that abound in contingencies, to
notice opportunities for goal-oriented language use and assist their students in
responding to these opportunities and turning them into learning events.
Kramsch et al (2000) argue that authorship is closely related to the concept of
agency: that is the power to make meaningful action. Agency was gained in the
PrOCALL classes by a number of students who oriented their work towards
electronic communities on the Web. Students not only were aware of their
audience but also believed that their work had potential to impact the world
outside the classroom.
Jasper, a student of French, sees the pages created by his class as contributions
to overcoming the colonization of the new electronic world by the English
language: ‘students are creating Web pages to diversify what’s available on the
Web and also to overcome the colonization of the English language… It’s really
like claiming land in cyberspace if you like’.
Another student, Luke, experienced living in Indonesia and became
profoundly interested in Indonesian culture. He was shocked by the hardships of
living there and at the same time genuinely impressed by the continued effort of
the Indonesian people to maintain a communal lifestyle with dignity. Luke
created a Web project on child labour in Indonesia intending to air this issue to
the wide Internet audience. When asked about the purpose of his page, he said:
‘basically to raise the issue, just to get people to think about it and to say there is
a problem and that people, normal people should have some responsibility as
well’. Luke tried to make his Web page simple by avoiding technical terms, as he
wanted to appeal to a broad worldwide audience.
Development of cross-cultural linguistic awareness

Debski (2000) in his analysis of the recreation of the PrOCALL innovation gives
an example of a student who expresses concern about how communication tools
were used in his Japanese class. The students were asked to email assigned
partners and inquire about the topics of their Web-based projects. This is how
Mark reacted to this task:
‘Also, in terms of emailing people on the Web forum that was good in
principle, but at our level, we know a lot of Japanese people. And if you
say to us to email someone on this kind of thing, I’d rather email someone
I know. Maybe that’s a Japanese thing. You tend more to spend the initial
stages working on the relationship and then you work on what you are
going to do together, whereas the way it worked here, from the outset you
were asking questions, which seemed very unnatural.’ (Mark, student of
Japanese) (Debski, 2000)
Mark feels uncomfortable asking his Japanese partner questions without the
customary Japanese introductions. The electronic medium facilitates direct and
prompt contacts, yet the student experiences a dilemma as he is not sure how to
transfer behaviour characteristic of face-to-face communication to electronic
interaction.
The student’s intuitive apprehension finds support in recent research in cross-
cultural computer-mediated communication (CMC). Sugimoto and Levin (2000)
discuss the electronic literacy practices in the US and Japan and describe several
differences between the norms of email writing in the two countries. The
researchers report, for example, that although email messages are colloquial in
both countries, many US messages start with ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ while
many Japanese open their email stating their name and affiliation, for example:
‘This is Takagi @ Waseda University’. They also discuss the differences in the use
of emoticons and conclude that although their general function is similar, the
specific forms and uses are different. Similar to other media, email undergoes
acculturation: it interacts with the message in order to mirror the specific
sociocultural contexts in which it is used, a process well described by Gottlieb
(2000) in her study of word-processing in Japan.
The PrOCALL classes gave the students an opportunity to reflect on how they
should apply the linguistic norms and customs of the target cultures in their use
of the electronic media. They supported the development of student skills in the
use of the new electronic genres in the target languages and cultures. Such
sociolinguistic knowledge well complemented the support the Internet
traditionally provides for the learning of cultural content (Andrews, 2000;
Mueller-Hartmann, 2000; Osuna and Meskill, 1998).
Distribution of power and identity development

Recent research describes CMC as having an equalizing effect on students
(Harasim, 1990). In L2 learning contexts, it has been proven that shy students
tend to participate more in networked discussion and the ratio between teacher-talk
and student-talk improves (Kern, 1995; Warschauer, 1996). On the other hand,
teachers decide whether they can be contacted by email, whether to permit or

restrict free online discussion and access to certain resources, making electronic
networks instruments of either liberation or control (Warschauer and Lepeintre,
1997). It is evident that CMC influences power relations between various
stakeholders in the learning/teaching process.
The role of CMC as a liberating gateway to information and authentic social
networks is particularly amplified in the case of languages and cultures that are
politically oppressed or isolated. A student of Indonesian in one of the PrOCALL
classrooms praised the class for helping her develop a more authentic view of
what Indonesians think about their government:
‘I found discussion groups with people criticizing the government. The

press over there is very controlled by the government so the Internet is
another option that I can really know what the people think and feel about
the government.’ (Odo, Indonesian class)
The significance of technology as a factor affecting power relations and assisting

identity development has recently been present in discussions of language
revival and maintenance in different parts of the world. Almasude (1999)
describes the new communications technology as a powerful force helping to
preserve the identity of the Amazigh people of North Africa and the Thmazight
language. Before the Internet, the Amazigh identity was a local issue for the
various isolated subgroups, as the countries of North Africa censured information
on the Amazigh culture. Through online discussion, the researcher argues, the
isolated groups began perceiving themselves as members of one language culture
and started making plans for implementing the Thmazight language in education,
technology and science. Similarly, Warschauer (in press) describes the
significance of the Internet for the Hawaiian revitalization programme in a
tertiary setting. Interacting in Hawaiian in cyberspace provided language
students with the opportunity to strengthen their sense of individual and collective
identity. He concludes that the most important role of the Internet for language
maintenance is in helping people see an endangered language as part of their
future. This note is also present in Nathan's (2000) study of Aboriginal
participation in the WWW in Australia.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have considered the significance of modern technology for
situating language learning in social contexts and for implementing
learning through social interaction, as advocated by current SLA theory. For this
purpose, we have looked at evidence coming from various project-oriented
classrooms utilizing networked computers as a tool supporting learning through
interaction. Several cautious conclusions can be drawn from these analyses.
Web-based projects act as a catalyst for social interaction. Research

demonstrates that classroom communication engendered by Web projects
contains a wide range of rhetorical features, resembling naturalistic interaction.
Today’s computers provide space where manipulation and movement of electronic
objects intertwines with language use driven by negotiation and collaborative
planning. However, to date little evidence has been collected linking second
language development directly to collaborative work at the computer. In view of
the ecological perspective on SLA, new research must be undertaken describing
how second language development can be related to navigation through and
manipulation of electronic signs on the computer screen. Such research could
perhaps benefit from mixing observation and discourse analysis with methods
developed in software usability studies, such as screen capture, eye tracking and
input logging to obtain the clearest possible image of activity at the computer.
There is a growing body of evidence that CMC supports negotiation of
meaning, a positive condition of second language acquisition. The medium
assists students in providing thoughtful and focused responses, as interaction is
chronicled and student contributions are placed next to one another inviting
critical analysis. There are many aspects of the effect of CMC on L2 speakers
that require further investigation. For example, we need to know more about how
flexibly L2 speakers respond to a change of bandwidth (Swan, Chapter 10, this
volume).
Web-based projects often instil in students the feeling of authorship much
more vivid than generally experienced in traditional classrooms. Students are
challenged to weigh their Web contributions prudently, as these become part of a
widely available store of information and affect stakeholders in various social
processes. Such authentic communicative situations create opportunities for
contingent goal-oriented L2 use. An important task for teachers is to assist their
students in responding to these opportunities in order to turn them into learning
events, for example by facilitating ‘noticing’ or providing the discrete linguistic
units the students may need.
The new media affect the distribution of power in educational environments,
both at the micro level of the classroom and the macro level of state policy.
Research shows, for example, that shy students tend to participate more in
computer-mediated interaction and the voice of the teacher becomes less
overwhelming. Web-based interaction can assist the development of cultural and
social identity in language learners by increasing in them cross-cultural
awareness and extending access to language resources and social networks. This
last aspect is of particular importance to learners of oppressed and/or threatened
languages. Communication technologies have become a means of expression for
oppressed voices that is less subject to government control than newspapers,
radio and television. More research is required on the role ICT plays in the
learning and teaching of indigenous and minority languages around the world.
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Chapter 10
Developing social presence in online course
discussions
Karen Swan
Introduction
One of the more interesting findings arising from research on learning through
asynchronous electronic networks is the importance that online discussion seems
to play in its success. For example, in our empirical study relating course design
factors to student perceptions of learning (Swan et al, 2000), we found that
interaction with instructors, interaction with peers, and the value placed on
participation in course discussions were the factors most significantly related to
student perceptions. Other researchers have reported similar findings (Hawisher
and Pemberton, 1997; Jiang and Ting, 2000; Picciano, 1998).
Indeed, asynchronous discussion seems both a significant factor in the success
of online courses and significantly different from face-to-face discussion in
traditional classrooms. In online discussion, all students have a voice and no
students can dominate the conversation. The asynchronous nature of the
discussion makes it impossible for even an instructor to control. Accordingly,
many researchers note that students perceive online discussion as more equitable
and more democratic than traditional classroom discussions (Harasim, 1990;
Levin et al, 1990; Ruberg et al, 1996). Because it is asynchronous, online
discussion also affords participants the opportunity to reflect on their classmates’
contributions while creating their own, and to reflect on their own writing before
posting it. This creates a certain mindfulness among students and a culture of
reflection in online learning (Hiltz, 1994; Poole, 2000).
In addition, many researchers familiar with computer-mediated
communication (CMC) have noted what Walther (1992) refers to as the
‘hyperpersonalness’ of the medium. Participants in online discussion seem to
project their personalities into it, creating feelings of presence that build online
learning communities (Gunawardena and Zittle, 1997; Leh, 2001; Poole, 2000;
Rourke et al, 2001). In fact, our own research (Richardson and Swan, 2001)
shows that this feeling of presence is significantly correlated with student
perceptions of satisfaction with and learning from online courses.
This feeling of presence, however, is precisely what is most surprising in the
online learning literature. In fact, both social presence theory (Short et al, 1976)
DEVELOPING SOCIAL PRESENCE 137
and media richness theory (Rice, 1992) predict just the opposite. They suggest
that the inability of text-based CMC to transmit the vocal and non-verbal cues
found in face-to-face communications renders it a less ‘immediate’, colder, less
personable experience.
This chapter explores the issue of the development of social presence in online
course discussions and proposes an equilibrium model to account for that
development. It describes a study that examined the affective, interactive and
cohesive verbal immediacy behaviours of participants in an online course
discussion, and extrapolates from this research to provide suggestions for online
developers and instructors seeking to create online communities of learning in
their courses.
Background
‘Immediacy’ refers to the perceived ‘psychological distance between
communicators’ (Weiner and Mehrabian, 1968). In traditional, face-to-face
classrooms, educational researchers have found that teachers’ behaviours can
lessen the psychological distance between themselves and their students, leading,
directly or indirectly depending on the study, to greater learning (Christophel,
1990; Gorham, 1988, Richmond, 1990; Rodriguez et al, 1996). They have
further distinguished between teachers’ verbal immediacy behaviours (giving
praise, soliciting viewpoints, use of humour, self-disclosure, etc) and their non-
verbal immediacy behaviours (physical proximity, touch, eye-contact, facial
expressions, gestures, etc), both of which have been shown to positively contribute
to student learning.
The immediacy research in traditional classrooms has implications for online
learning. Some communication researchers have argued that differing media
have differing capabilities to transmit the non-verbal and vocal cues that produce
feelings of immediacy in face-to-face communication. Short et al (1976) referred
to these capabilities as ‘social presence,’ or the ‘quality of a medium to project
the salience of others in interpersonal communication’. They contended that media
with limited bandwidth have a correspondingly limited capacity to project social
presence (and by extension promote learning) than more broadband media.
Media richness theory (Rice, 1992) reached a similar conclusion, as does
Picard’s (1997) more recent notion of ‘affective channel capacity’. Researchers
experienced with online teaching and learning, however, contest this view.
Participants in CMC, they argue, create social presence by projecting their
identities into their communications. Walther (1992), for example, argued that
even participants in strictly text-based electronic conferences adapt their
language to make missing non-verbal and vocal cues explicit and so develop
relationships that are marked by affective exchanges. What is important, these
researchers contend, is not media capabilities, but rather personal perceptions of
presence (Gunawardena and Zittle, 1997; Poole, 2000; Richardson and Swan,
2001; Rourke et al, 2001).
Of course, as previously noted, online discussions can be quite different from

discussion in face-to-face classrooms. In particular, the role of instructors often
shifts from discussion leader to discussion facilitator, and students commonly
assume more responsibility (Ahern and El-Hindi, 2000; Coppola et al, 2001;
Poole, 2000). Research on immediacy in face-to-face classrooms has focused on
teacher immediacy behaviours. Research on social presence/immediacy in online
environments, however, must accordingly concern itself with the immediacy
behaviours of all discussion participants.
Gunawardena and Zittle (1997), for example, developed a survey to explore
student perceptions of social presence in computer-mediated conferences. In two
separate studies, they found that students rated the asynchronous discussion as
highly interactive and social. The researchers concluded that course participants
created social presence by projecting their identities online to build a discourse
community among themselves.
Our own research (Richardson and Swan, 2001) explored perceptions of social
presence among students enrolled in 17 online courses using a survey adapted
from Gunawardena and Zittle. They found that students’ perceived learning,
satisfaction with instructors and perceptions of social presence were all highly
correlated. Indeed, direct entry regression revealed that students’ overall
perception of social presence was a predictor of their perceived learning in the
courses.
To account for such findings, Danchak et al (2001) argue for an equilibrium
model of the development of social presence in mediated educational
environments (Figure 10.1). Equilibrium, in this sense, refers to an expected level
of interaction in communications (Argyle and Cook, 1976). When communicative
equilibrium is disrupted (as, for example, when one conversation partner moves
closer to another), reciprocal actions to restore equilibrium usually result (as
when the other partner moves backward or reduces his or her gaze). Danchak et
al suggest that analogous behaviours preserve the expected (from face-to-face-
experience) social presence equilibrium in CMC. They argue that when fewer
affective communication channels are available to transmit immediacy via
conventional vocal and non-verbal cues, participants in mediated
communications will increase their verbal immediacy behaviours to the extent
needed to preserve a sense of presence.
To further explore the function of verbal immediacy behaviours in the
development of social presence in online discussions, Rourke et al (2001)
distinguished among three kinds of verbal immediacy responses. These are:
affective responses, personal expressions of emotion, feelings, beliefs, and
values; cohesive responses, behaviours that build and sustain a sense of group
commitment; and interactive responses, behaviours that provide evidence that
the other is attending. They tested these categories in a pilot analysis of online
discussion and found them quite reliable.
Figure 10.1 Equilibrium Model of Social Presence
Verbal immediacy behaviours of participants in online

course discussion
This section describes a study undertaken to better understand the kinds and uses
of verbal immediacy behaviours in online course discussions based on the
categories developed by Rourke et al (2001) and the equilibrium model of
Danchak et al (2001).
Data were collected from the discussions that took place in a graduate level
course in educational computing given entirely online in the Spring 2001
semester. The course consisted of four modules that ran sequentially across the
semester. In each module, there were three discussions initiated by instructor
questions. Students were required to submit at least one response to the
instructor prompt and at least two responses to their classmates in each
discussion. They could, of course, submit as many responses as they liked, and
many participated a good deal more than required.
Data collected consisted of all discussion strands from the first discussion in
each module initiated in the first five days each module was open. Two hundred
and thirty-five postings in 39 discussion threads, or approximately 10 per cent of
all postings in the course discussions, were examined. The average number of
words per posting was 82.4 (range=5 to 562); the average number of responses
per thread was 6.05 (range=0 to 30); and the average interactivity (measured as
the depth of responses) was 3.63 (range=1 to 10).
Students participating in the course ranged in age from 23 to 48 and were
about two-thirds female. The majority were practicing K–12 teachers, but course
participants also included post-secondary educators, librarians and educational
technology specialists.
In order to examine the verbal immediacy behaviours of students participating

in these course discussions, a coding schema was developed (Swan et al, 2001)
based on the classroom-based immediacy literature, the CMC social presence
literature and on indicators emerging from the data. Three categories of
indicators were identified following the work of Rourke et al (2001):
1. Affective indicators are personal expressions of emotion, feelings, beliefs,

and values. The affective indicators we coded for included the use of
paralanguage, expressions of emotion, statements of values, humour and
self-disclosure. These are listed in Table 10.1, which gives the code used for
the indicator, its definition, examples from the discussion, and research
sources for its inclusion in the coding scheme (note: ‘emergent’ references
refers to categories emerging from the current data).
2. Cohesive indicators are verbal immediacy behaviours that build and sustain
a sense of group commitment. Cohesive indicators coded for included
greetings and salutations, the use of vocatives, group reference, social
sharing and course reference. They are given in Table 10.2.
3. Interactive indicators provide evidence that others are attending. They
support interactions among communicators. Indicators we coded for
included acknowledgement, agreement, approval, invitation and personal
advice. They are given in Table 10.3.
Hardcopy transcriptions of online discussions were coded by multiple

researchers for each of the 15 immediacy indicators. Discrepancies between
coders were resolved by consensus and reference to the discussion transcripts.
Data analyses consisted of compiling and reviewing raw numbers of indicators
across modules and reviewing the findings for patterns of indicator use.
Overall findings
Figure 10.2 shows the raw numbers of responses and indicators across modules.
We found a great many immediacy indicators in the online discussions we
reviewed, a total of 1,336 in 235 postings, or an average of almost six indicators
per posting. We believe these findings provide evidence that participants in the
online discussions we studied made up for the lack of affective communication
channels by employing more immediacy behaviours in those channels that were
available to them (Danchak et al, 2001).
A closer look at the data supports this notion as well. For example, the most
frequently used verbal immediacy behaviour (254 instances) was the use of
paralanguage, the use of text to convey emotion or emphasis. It seems reasonable
to assume that discussion participants were using paralanguage to take the place
of gestures, facial expressions and aural cues in their conversations. At the other
extreme, humour was the least used immediacy behaviour. This may be because
humour really does necessitate more affective communications channels.
Table 10.1 Affective indicators
Affective immediacy indicators

Affective verbal immediacy behaviours might be thought of as ways of
projecting personal presence into online discourse. Not surprisingly (given the
equilibrium model), they were the most commonly used type of indicator. Across
all modules, we found an average of 2.8 affective indicators per response.
Figure 10.3 shows the raw numbers of affective verbal immediacy indicators
found across all the discussion coded. The most frequently used affective
indicator was paralanguage with an average of over one indicator per response.
As previously noted, the use of paralanguage can be seen as an attempt to
reproduce in text some of the affect conveyed in gestures, intonations and facial
expressions.
Table 10.2 Cohesive indicators
Figure 10.2 Responses and immediacy indicators in each module

Table 10.3 Interactive indicators
Figure 10.3 Affective indicators across modules

The second most frequently employed affective indicator, with almost one
indicator per response, was self-disclosure. Self-disclosure is the sharing of
personal information, usually of a vulnerable nature. Self-disclosure is a verbal
immediacy behaviour frequently noted in the immediacy research as employed
by teachers to lesson the gap between themselves and their students (eg,
Gorham, 1988; Rodriguez et al, 1996). It seems to have been employed similarly
in the discussion threads we coded. Indeed, self-disclosure seemed to evoke the
greatest number and depth of response from other participants. However,
humour, another behaviour noted in the immediacy research was very little
employed, perhaps because many forms of humour are easily misinterpreted in
text-based communication. This finding points to differences between face-to-
face and computer-mediated communications.
Figure 10.4 gives the raw numbers of affective immediacy indicators found in
the discussion threads we coded. It thus shows the use of these indicators across
time. It is interesting to note in this regard the pattern of usage across the
modules. It can be seen that the use of affective indicators in general, and
paralanguage and self-disclosure in particular, seemed to grow to a peak usage in
the third module and drop precipitously after that. This usage seems to mirror the
pattern of discussion in the course in general (Figure 10.2). The finding suggests
that affective immediacy behaviours are an integral part of the social interaction
that supports learning, but that in the online environment they take the only
available, verbal, form.
For example, the excerpt that follows was taken from the first module. The
discussion was about advertising on the World Wide Web. Notice the extensive
use of affective verbal behaviours and the ways in which these uses of personal
expression seem to be picked up by consecutive speakers:
WOW! (TD)—1/25
Every Web site that I come upon has crazy advertising. It is almost
getting to be too much. There are screens popping up on top of what you
are doing and it gets to be a pain in the butt! I think it is good for the
companies but it is a pain for people like me who use the computer for
research and don’t want to be interrupted. Maybe the advertising topic
should only pop up if you are looking for that type of item. This might, I
mean MIGHT, work. What do you think?
Figure 10.4 Affective indicators for each module
Advertising (DO)—1/25
The problem with that is that the advertisers make most of their money
selling us things we don’t need so therefore they would never agree to this.
Think about the times you get to the check out line and pick up stuff that is
there that you weren’t thinking of purchasing. They know what they are
doing believe you me!!!!
Agree (TD)—1/29
I agree with you. There are times when I am told that I need this and that
but as it turns out I really didn’t need it. I am intelligent but I don’t know
everything and there are times when I get burnt. I hate it when people turn
to pull the wool over your eyes and you are helpless.
Advertisements are great but don’t sell me something that I really don’t
need.
Advertising (DO)—1/31
I’ve heard that if you are to make a purchase for something you think
you ‘NEED’ that if you wait one week and ask yourself again if you really
need it your thoughts may differ and your wallet may stay intact!!!
Great idea (RR)—2/03

I like this philosophy. My mother also has a similar take on this. She
always says that ‘nothing is a bargain unless you need it’. I have stuck with
this and my wallet has stayed relatively intact. I wish my mother-in-law
would learn to do this. Thank God she does not have or know how to use a
computer or her house would be full of things that were ‘on sale’.
Figure 10.5 Cohesive indicators across modules

Cohesive immediacy indicators
Cohesive verbal immediacy behaviours build and sustain a sense of group
commitment to support the development of a discourse community. Figure 10.5
shows the raw numbers of cohesive immediacy indicators found across all the
discussion postings we coded. Cohesive indicators were the least used of verbal
immediacy behaviours in the discussion postings we coded. None the less, across
all modules, we found an average of one cohesive indicator per response. The
most frequently used cohesive indicator was group reference, the use of words
such as ‘we’, ‘our’, or ‘us’ to refer to the class as a group. It is interesting to note
in this regard that the use of group reference declined across the modules. It
seems possible that the use of such reference became less necessary as a clear
classroom community was formed.
Figure 10.6 gives the raw numbers of cohesive immediacy indicators found in
threads coded in each of the modules of the course. It shows a significant decline
in all cohesive indicators by the third and fourth modules, except perhaps in the
use of greetings and salutations and vocatives. Greetings and salutations and
vocatives are immediacy indicators that refer to conversational partners by name.
It may be, then, that some of the use of group reference was replaced by personal
reference as participants learned and became comfortable using each other’s
names. This shift in behaviours does not account for the significant decline in
most cohesive behaviours across modules. The most plausible explanation
remains that discussion participants felt less need to employ cohesive indicators
as they felt a greater organic cohesion amongst themselves.
A very interesting example of the use of social sharing occurred in the second
module of the course. The discussion had been about computers then and now,
when one student mentioned that they were turning 40 the next day (social
sharing). The occasion became a very cohesive one for the class; there were a
total of 30 responses in the whole thread, and students began to reflect on online
discourse and community building process itself.
The excerpt that follows was taken from the discussion in the first module on
the commercialization of the World Wide Web. Notice the use of group
reference in all of the postings and the beginning use of greetings and vocatives.
Web wariness (CA)—1/29

Figure 10.6 Cohesive indicators for each module
T, while I am a supporter of public radio and television, I also realize

that we live in a world in which our children will be bombarded by
commercials and it is our job as teachers (and parents) to teach them to be
discriminating. The web offers an additional challenge to parents and
teachers in that it solicits participation in ‘contests.’ My 10–year-old is
bonkers about signing up for these, believing that he will win free things,
etc. Our house rule is that he may not enter the contests—we tell him that
it is just a way to solicit him, that it is highly unlikely that he will win, and
that I refuse to allow our computer to be a receptacle for more unwanted
advertising. So, web advertising can be used as a ‘teachable moment’ at
home, or in the classroom.
Teachable moments (KS)—1/29

Good point, C.Commercials won’t go away. The best we can do is make
them into teachable moments.
Just say no (CA)—1/31

I also think the concept of ‘just say no’ to our children has been lost on
our generation of parents. If a child or student doesn’t understand that he
or she is being manipulated by the advertiser, then, as adults, we simply
have to say, ‘no, you cannot have this.’
Learn (TD)—2/05
We never stop learning and when we do we have given up on life. I learn
something new and everyday I am thankful for learning. Commercials we
can definitely learn from.
Figure 10.7 Interactive indicators across modules

Interactive immediacy indicators
Interactive immediacy behaviours support communicative interactions by
providing evidence that others are attending. Figure 10.7 shows the raw numbers
of interactive immediacy indicators found across all discussion postings coded.
Across all modules, we found an average of two interactive indicators per
response. The most frequently used interactive indicator was acknowledgement,
which refers to direct reference to the contents of others’ messages. Discussion
participants employed almost one use of acknowledgement in every response.
Agreement/ disagreement and approval, taken together, were used almost as
frequently. These findings seem to indicate that acknowledgement, agreement
and approval are the glue that holds asynchronous discussion together, an
interpretation given further credence by the fact that the use of all interactive
indicators continued to increase across modules.
Figure 10.8 gives the raw numbers of interactive immediacy indicators found
in the discussion threads coded in each of the modules of the course. It shows a
consistent increase in the use of interactive immediacy behaviours across time.
The pattern seems to indicate, at least within the course studied, a growing
awareness among course participants of the importance of the use of these
indicators. Thus, while cohesive behaviours became less important as the online
community came together, the importance of interactive behaviours seemed to
grow over time as participants became aware of their usefulness in linking the
discussion into a coherent whole.
For example, the excerpt that follows was taken from a discussion of
computer-based tools in the third module. Participants in this thread had been
talking about PowerPoint and word processing software and how they could be
used to produce exciting presentations and documents. The excerpt begins with
someone bringing in the point that sometimes the power of these tools can be
overused. Notice that ED first agrees with the previous speaker before
Figure 10.8 Interactive indicators for each module
disagreeing slightly. In a similar vein, CA in the fourth response shown here

begins by stating ‘How about another perspective’ rather than saying ‘I disagree’.
Also notice the way the word ‘glitziness’ from the first posting here has been
picked up in the subject lines of the next three postings. Likewise, the fifth
posting picks up ‘pictures and sounds’ from the fourth posting as its subject line.
The use of acknowledgement, as well as agreement and approval, continues
through the texts of all the postings. This helps to link the postings together, and
makes possible the creation of knowledge that seems to be taking place.
Cringe (ED)—3/22
Yes, computers have made typewriters and BandW slides totally
outdated. The new technology can make me cringe as well, especially
when the presenter has over animated and added so many sound effects
and moving text. I’ve gotten ‘seasick’ watching some presentations!
Sometimes the glitziness takes away from content.
Great point—Beware of glitziness! (MO)

You make a great point and I agree that sometimes the use of technology
can be overdone. We really have to think about the technology…is it really
adding a benefit to the learner or is it a distraction.
Glitziness (WO)—3/22
You’ve got a great point, and likewise with student papers and
presentations. Sometimes a student’s project report will have a stunning
cover sheet (which I never require, anyway) and close to zero content.
Glitz—maybe not (CA)—3/23

How about another perspective: Perhaps some learners who are more
visual jump at the chance to use pictures and sound to express themselves.
Sure, some students may be taking the ‘easy’ way out. But I suspect that
other students who have problems expressing themselves in language, now
have an alternative. Perhaps there is a way to work with them to deepen
their understanding using the so-called ‘gimmicks’. What about an essay in
pictures and sound?
Pictures and sound (WO)—3/23

It’s a tough issue. In my posting I was thinking about a number of
project reports I’ve received in the last few years that had lovely covers
with interesting graphics but which really failed to address the issues in the
project I’d assigned (first semester calculus).
However, I’ve been thinking a lot about exactly the issues you raise—
how to present mathematics, and give students options for presenting it, in
ways that appeal to other intelligences. I’m developing a liberal-arts math
class…
Math alternatives (CA)—3/27

W, I can see that you are facing a difficult issue. I can imagine that it is
not easy to find alternative ways to express math competency.
Notice also the use of affective and cohesive immediacy behaviours in this
excerpt. There is a lot of paralanguage, personal opinions and self-disclosure
expressed, as well as group reference, vocatives, and greetings and salutations. It
seems that all the immediacy indicators work together to make the discussion work.
Discussion
The findings from our analyses of the online course discussions suggest that the
students participating in the course we investigated strove to create a community
of learning by employing text-based, verbal immediacy behaviours to reduce the
psychological distance amongst themselves. The findings support an equilibrium
model of social presence (Danchak et al, 2001) that suggests that participants in
mediated communication employ whatever means are available to them to create
a feeling of presence similar to what they expect from their face-to-face
experiences. In addition, the analyses reveal that although the use of affective
indicators mirrored the general flow of the course discussions as the course
progressed, cohesive indicators declined in importance, while the importance of
interactive indicators increased. These findings suggest that different kinds of
immediacy indicators perform different functions in the development of social

presence and that the importance of these functions varies across time.
The research on teachers’ immediacy behaviours in face-to-face classrooms
shows links between teacher immediacy behaviours and students’ learning.
Although some scholars have argued that the lack of affective communication
channels in CMC leads to a loss of immediacy and a corresponding loss in
learning, more recent research suggests otherwise. This study supports the latter
research and extends it by examining online discussion participants’ use of
particular kinds of immediacy behaviours across time.
Of course, this research only looks at a single course and it is impossible to
generalize from it. Future research should examine discussion in other course
contexts. It would be interesting, in this vein, to examine courses covering
different subject areas and involving differing groups of students. Of particular
interest, of course, are the roles of instructors and instructional design in
providing support for the development of social presence.
In the educational computing course investigated, participation in the
discussions was required. Indeed, it counted for almost a quarter of the course
grade. Discussions were initiated by open-ended instructor questions that
solicited discussion participants’ opinions and experiences and allowed for their
exploration of aspects of issues that were meaningful to them. The instructor was
an active participant in the discussions, giving positive reinforcement to students
that modelled the use of immediacy behaviours. Other chapters in this book (see
Smith and Stacey, Murphy and Gazi, and McLoughlin) provide evidence that these
sorts of discussion structures and instructor behaviours lead to greater
socialization and the development of social presence and community. This
chapter gives some insight into how students’ verbal immediacy behaviours
support that development within such an environment.
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Chapter 11
Socialization through CMC in differently
structured environments
Peter Smith and Elizabeth Stacey
Introduction
Computer mediated communication (CMC) has changed the nature of learning at
a distance from an individual experience that is largely remote and isolated from
other students, to one in which the technology can enable more ongoing
interaction with fellow students. The potential of using online technology such as
computer conferencing to provide students with a means of developing and
sharing their construction of knowledge of their course, while they socially
construct group knowledge within a collaborative learning environment, is one
of the greatest advantages of CMC.
It is clear, however, that for the social construction of learning to take place
there must be established comfortable online socialization among students to
provide a platform for learning construction to occur. That socialization must
move beyond the unfocused interaction that Klemm and Snell (1995) have
observed can be easily trivialized both by learners and their teachers, such that
the interaction never moves beyond the entirely social. Establishing social
presence, the ability of online participants to project themselves into a textual
environment, which has few visual or contextual cues, is an important phase in
an online course for students forming a learning community (Rourke et al, 1999;
Stacey, 2001).
The provision of a course structure to enable online socialization to be used
effectively so that students can learn collaboratively has received comment
throughout the literature and forms the focus of our chapter in this book. We are
interested here in exploring the effects that different forms of pedagogical
structure can have on the encouragement towards comfortable socialization
through CMC, and its progression towards becoming a tool for collaborative
learning.
Constructivism
The importance to learning of the opportunity to participate in a social
construction of knowledge has been researched by cognitive psychologists such
SOCIALIZATION THROUGH CMC 155
as Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner, who emphasized the social nature of learning,
particularly when learners are confronted with problems that they cannot solve
on their own without the resources of a group. More importantly, the process of
discussion, listening to other group members and receiving feedback on ideas,
provides the cognitive scaffolding these constructivists see as essential to higher-
order thinking (Slavin, 1994). The development of knowledge and understanding
within conceptual frameworks, it is argued by the constructivists (eg, von
Glasersfeld, 1987), is an ongoing interpretive process, which is reinforced by past
and ongoing experiences. As Rogoff (1995) has argued, the appropriation of
knowledge and understanding is not just the internalization of externally derived
stimuli, but also the individual’s construction of those stimuli. Individuals
collaboratively construct a common grounding of beliefs, meaning and
understandings that they share in activity (Pea, 1993) through a culture, or
community, of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991). As Stacey (1996, 1998) has
argued, these constructions depend largely on a socio-cultural and
communicative context for their development.
Collaborative learning
Through her interview-based and content analysis research with three large
groups of learners in differing contexts, Stacey (1998, 1999) has shown the
importance of group collaboration in learning. Her discussion of CMC, from a
social constructivist perspective, focused on interactive online group discussion
as central to the learners’ effective construction of new conceptual
understandings. The research found that, in the social context of group
interaction, the collaborative group develops a consensus of knowledge through
communicating different perspectives, receiving feedback from other students
and teachers and discussing ideas, until a final negotiation of understanding is
reached. Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1978) theory that conceptual understandings
are developed through verbal interaction, Stacey found that a socially constructed
learning environment is essential for effective learning. The social conversation
provides the learner with a context and stimulus for thought construction and
learning, which is the means by which the group contributes more to each
learner’s understanding than they are able to do individually.
Beckett (2000) has pointed to the potential for online learning to disembody
learners and their instructors such that the important social construction of
learning becomes lost. Effectively structured CMC that develops collaboration
between learners and between learners and their instructors can serve to reduce
the effects of that potential disembodiment and enable a more effective
appropriation of meaning to be derived through interaction. Research by Baker
and Dillon (1999) has also shown the importance of technologically mediated
student-led and student-centred communication in developing the confidence of
learners participating in online programs of instruction.
Socialization and community

The necessity for socialization to be established as an enabler for the social
construction of knowledge to proceed has been identified in the online learning
literature by Salmon (2000). In her staged model for effective computer mediated
learning, Salmon adopts as its first stage the development of socialization among
participants. The argument here is simple and straightforward—comfortable
communication has to be established between students prior to more focused
discussions occurring that assist with the construction of knowledge. More
recently Smith and Smith (2002) have questioned the notion that socialization is
an enabler that needs to be established among students prior to engaging them
with the social construction of knowledge. Drawing on their previous research
with Chinese students, Smith and Smith (1999) have suggested that for some
students socialization is best developed contiguously within a structure of
learning tasks that are designed to develop socialization as the task is addressed.
Other work by Smith (2000) with vocational students points to the same
conclusion, such that Smith (2001), and Smith and Sadler-Smith (2001) have
developed a set of suggested strategies for the development of CMC-based
socialization within a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) for
learners in workplaces.
This notion of a community of practice is used in a different form by
McAlpine (2000) in his research on computer-mediated learning that uses, in
part, the establishment of special discussion groups for students to work together
on common focused problems. Consistent with the Jonassen (1999) suggestion
of Constructivist Learning Environments (CLEs), the technology enables
collaboration and social construction of knowledge. CLEs engage students in
investigation of a problem, critiquing related cases and reviewing information
resources. Learners develop needed skills and collaborate with others, using the
social support of the group to learn effectively (Morphew, 2000). Jonassen et al
(1999, p 52) claim that ‘the key to meaningful learning is ownership of the
problem or learning goal’, some component of which the learners must define.
Stacey’s (2001) research found that the teachers role was important in
structuring and providing models of messaging. Although most students were
comfortable with the Internet as an information source, computer conferencing
was new to many and most needed to observe the teacher’s social presence skills
before attempting to socialize online. The literature on CMC provides a wealth
of research on differently structured CMC experiences among students and their
teachers (Collis et al, 2000; Housego and Freeman, 2000) but there is a lack of
research that undertakes a comparative analysis of different forms of structure.
Some empirical observations on different structures

In previous research on CMC among postgraduate coursework students, Stacey et
al (2001) have investigated different forms of structure and their effect on student
communication between themselves and with their lecturer. In this research study
we examined three forms of structure in CMC-supported subjects of study
provided for distance education students. In each of our three forms of structure,
students also received printed study materials that formed the basis of content,
and CMC was used to develop student understanding through collaboration.
Each of the different structures required different levels of interaction between
students, and between students and their lecturer:
• One structure encouraged interaction but did not require it and, although the
lecturer actively facilitated discussion between students, there was no
relationship between level of interaction and assessment requirements.
• A second structure required students to participate online in specific tasks, but
did not link that participation to formal assessment.
• A third structure required students to participate regularly throughout the
semester and linked participation to the formal assessment of the subject.
As would be expected, interactivity was by far the greatest in the subject that
linked participation to assessment. The mean number of interactions per student
across the semester in that subject was 89. The subject that made no such formal
link, but expected participation in online tasks, showed a mean number of
interactions per participant at 10.8, while the encouraged but unstructured
subject showed a mean of 4.1 interactions per participant across the semester.
The role of socialization was examined in the two subjects that differed most—
the unstructured one, and the subject that required participation as part of the
assessment. The unstructured subject was characterized by early socialization
strategies of introduction and information sharing about self. Quite quickly
though, participants moved into discussions of content and ideas, such that
socialization continued but changed in nature to become more associated with
encouragement of each other’s inputs to the discussion. A similar pattern was
observed in the assessment-linked subject, but the participation among students
was much higher. The difference in online participation densities yielded
naturally higher amounts of social interaction between students, as well as higher
amounts of cognitive engagement. Qualitative data indicated students in both
units liked the experience of CMC interaction. The evidence with the assessment-
linked subject was that the required interaction had forced them to develop
online relationships with their peers, and provided for a powerful opportunity for
the construction of knowledge through that interaction.
A comparison of two distinct structures

As a result of the previously described research and our reflections on practice,
we took the opportunity to develop a somewhat different form of structure in a
new subject being offered for the first time, again to Masters degree by
coursework students. We could then make some comparisons with an already
existing subject that used a different collaborative structure. That development of

a new structure enabled us to make detailed comparisons between the two
structures focused on in this chapter. Table 11.1 provides a brief overview of the
structures used in the two subjects compared here. Students undertaking each of
these two subjects are drawn from the same pool of Masters degree students and
are similar in many ways. Indeed, any of the students could just as likely been
enrolled in the other subject. Additionally, the subjects each conform to a similar
paradigm in terms of their workload demand, their styles of assessment and the
provision of print-based materials as well. All students accessed the same
groupware system (FirstClass) used for CMC in these two subjects. The
FirstClass architecture provided to students is also very similar in both subjects.
Subject A
The previous research, together with McAlpine’s (2000) findings, encouraged us
to develop smaller discussion groups, focused on specific issues related to the
subject. Collectively, students represented four general areas of interest,
reflecting their work contexts and the challenges that they faced in their everyday
practice. Accordingly, the new structure was based on these four communities of
practice that were identifiable among the student group. For each specialized
area of interest an application problem was generated, such that the subset of
students in the focal area were expected to work together as a group of
consultants to solve the problem that had been posed. The role of the lecturer
was to act as the customer for the consultant group, and to supply information to
the group as they requested it from the ‘customer’. Additionally, a general space
was available to all participants in the subject, such that they could engage in
broader discussions of the subject and its content. As is the case in subject B, the
architecture provides for specifically focused smaller group discussion spaces,
but what is important here and described below, is how students are expected to,
and do engage with these focused discussions.
In subject A student participation in the CMC discussion was strongly
encouraged but was not compulsory, and participation had no direct impact on
assessment. Participation was not made compulsory on a basis that CMC skills
were not part of the learning outcomes of the subject, and the student cohort
varied in their degree of access to the CMC discussions.
The development of socialization within this model is interesting to follow.
First, the lecturer invited students to enter the general space and introduce
themselves, and to state what their particular interests were. Whenever a student
entered that space the lecturer would respond within 24 hours to welcome the
student, to acknowledge the participation, and to guide them towards the
selection of a specialized conference that might best engage their interest. Students
typically responded to that message in the general space again, advising that they
had been to the specialized space and read the problem and had decided to
engage with it, or had decided to engage with a different problem in another of
Table 11.1 Summary of collaborative structures in subjects A and B
the specialized spaces. At that point students invited others to join them in the
specialized space, and then moved from the general space and into the chosen
specialism. Once in the specialized spaces, student interaction began with
considerable focus on the problem to be solved. However, it was clear that early
communications between students were focused more on housekeeping matters
of how they would organize themselves, what common ground and experience
they had and what general perspectives they had on the problem to be solved.
Also evident from the interactions between students was an early emphasis on
such things as concern over the budget to be applied to the problem, and how the
solution to the problem might be presented to the customer. It was clear that
what was happening here was that students were developing socialization
through the structure of the course, by focusing on the problem to be solved
(Smith and Smith, 2002).
Also interesting in this structure was that the interaction between students
began, by week three of the semester, to be characterized by a considerable
reduction in socialization. Interactions became very task-focused, with students
posting ideas and strategies that would serve to solve the problem they had been
set. Most of these messages were succinct and very much to the point of the
exercise. There appeared a sense of urgency among students to move towards
task completion, and some impatience was displayed towards students who were
not seen to be participating sufficiently. Communication flow in the CMC
component of the subject was brisk at an early stage. These findings are similar
to those of Rourke et al (1999) and Hara et al (2000) who found that purely
social interaction, not focused on the content of the course, declined as the
conference progressed, which they concluded was because students got to know
one another better.
What became evident as the semester progressed was a decreased interest in

the scenarios among students. Fewer students participated in the discussion,
which became dominated by a committed few who were keen to reach a
‘solution’ to the problem posed. Some discussion with students on this reduction
in interest indicated that a number felt excluded by the process as the problem
moved towards solution, because the discussion had moved beyond their level of
experience and knowledge of the issue, and they felt somewhat intimidated by
the students who were more experienced with addressing the implementation
issues demanded by the scenarios provided. Additionally, there appeared to be a
related matter that the problem was not ‘owned’ by them (Jonassen et al, 1999)
but had been developed by the course team. That lack of ownership was
exacerbated by the convergent nature of the problems to be solved, which
required the student group to reach agreed conclusions. There was evidence that
the problems posed would have been more successful had they required divergent
thinking and input on the part of students, such that they could each raise and
explore issues, rather than converge to an agreed position.
Subject B
In subject B, students were required to share resources they had researched and
evaluated through searching the World Wide Web, to moderate discussions
about issues they had chosen about online learning, and to work in collaborative
groups for an assessed task on researching the theory and process of learning
collaboratively online. The subject has a needs-based curriculum, which is
constructed to suit the varying levels of skills and experiences of each semester’s
group of students. The discussion is essential to developing the content of the
subject and with such an authentic reason, online interaction is high as the
learners demand it.
In this subject the teacher also explicitly established and modelled techniques
of social interaction so that the social presence of the participants was established
consciously in an environment that encouraged trust and supportive
response. Initially students were asked to introduce themselves to the group with
specific points of discussion such as professional role, purpose for course choice
and previous conferencing experience. At the beginning of the semester the
teacher responded to each new student encouragingly and used this initial period
to teach the students social practice and use of the software elements that
encourage socialization.
The structure of the course required task-based small group discussions to be
established in the early stages of the semester. After the introduction phase,
students communicated in conference spaces with fewer participants who shared
a content focus they had suggested or chosen. Moving into a small group
collaborative environment meant that students could establish small group
relationships in a more informal space and this was conducive to social
comments being included in most content messages whatever their complexity of

cognitive content. The structure of the tasks of the subject required the students
to break into subgroups by choice of issue for discussion. Subsequently, common
issues were grouped and used as the basis of the formation of the small
collaborative groups in which students worked for the second assessment task.
Such smaller group conference discussion spaces encouraged even more
continuing socialization as the group members interacted socially before
beginning the group task. Cohesive factors as defined by Rourke et al (1999),
such as addressing each other by name, communicating in purely social ways
such as greetings and farewells, and interactive aspects such as the reply and
quote functions of the software, and asking questions and complimenting others’
ideas were often used. The small group space was also a place for humour and
emotional expressions and disclosing details of their lives, responses categorized
as affective responses.
Though online participation was a requirement of this subject, the smaller
collaborative group spaces continued to be used for socialization as well as the
required content construction of the final group assignment. Though there was a
high rate of cognitive message content, the social presence factors also continued
to be important in the communication of the group, with high frequencies of
interactive and cohesive comments in particular continuing to appear within
messages. Levels of social presence frequency rose towards the end of the
semester, contradicting the results predicted from the literature that there would
be less social interaction over time, and challenging the notion of electronic
conferences as depersonalized and task-oriented, with lessening social interaction
over time (see Walther, 1996). It supports and confirms Walther’s (1996)
findings that though interpersonal impressions were formed more slowly with
CMC, relationships developed in the same way as in face-to-face situations, even
becoming more socially oriented in the online context. Walther proposed that
relationships require longer to develop in an electronic medium, and even in the
later part of the semester, members of the small groups were motivated to
continue their social interaction and their social relationships. This enabled a
social construction of knowledge to be developed into the collaborative group
assignment, which was the focus of the small group online discussion.
Discussion
An important contrast between the two subjects of study under discussion here was
not just the required participation, but also the flexibility of the problem, as well
as students learning to define the problem for themselves in their own context. In
the assessment-linked subject, students define the issues for discussion, find and
share the resources, then socially construct their ideas in online discussion.
Consistent with the Jonassen (1999) Constructivist Learning Environments
(CLEs), the use of technology in subject B enabled collaboration and social
construction of knowledge in that students were actively engaged with
identification of issues for discussion, the investigation of a problem, critique-

related cases and the review of information resources. These activities were
developed by the group with teacher guidance. Learners developed collaborative
skills with others, using the social support of the group to learn effectively. The
ownership of the problem was strong in this subject, providing support to the
Jonassen et al (1999) claim that ownership is a key to meaningful learning
through technology mediation.
The observations on ownership by participants of the issue under discussion is
given considerable support by our comparative observations in this chapter. In
subject A the students were provided with the problem to be discussed and
addressed through convergence in their discussion to an agreed solution. There
was no strong opportunity for students to adapt or change the problems to become
more personally meaningful, although there was an expectation that they would
use their own experience and their reading to assist in the solution of the problems.
However, the convergent nature of the required discussion was not as generative,
nor as personally engaging, as discussion of a more divergent nature might have
been.
Although compulsory participation obviously increased the participation rate
in subject B, our observation is that there was an interaction between the
compulsoriness and the nature of the discussions in the focus groups. Were
compulsoriness the only explanation for the higher participation rate, it could be
expected that there would be a minimalist approach to it among students. In fact,
the frequency of the participation and the nature of the interactions were much
more than minimalist, indicating interest among students in the discussion that
went beyond serving the requirements of the subject.
Socialization was used largely by students in subject A to establish early
comfort in communication with each other, and to establish some knowledge
about each other’s work contexts and interests in the problem being addressed.
Subsequent to that establishment of comfort and mutual knowledge, socialization
was rather limited and discussion was very task-oriented, and focused on
completing the problem solving exercise. In subject B socialization was
maintained throughout the subject and actually increased as the semester
progressed, and embedded within the ongoing discussion that formed the
learning component of the focused discussion.
In our view, this study has provided strong support to the development of
problem and issue ownership as a crucial component of effective and
sustained socialization that engages consistently with the learning intents of the
subject. As a consequence of our research on these two structures, future
development will change the problems posed from being defined closely by the
course team and convergent in nature, towards providing greater opportunity for
ownership through a more open problem definition allowing for more divergent
engagement by students. A more constructivist learning environment will give
purpose and importance to continuing socialization through CMC and establish a
more effective environment for collaborative learning.
Within a context of the increasing importance of e-learning and networked

learning environments, the research also provides some insights into the role of
structure as an important variable in the development and maintenance of
socialization and collaborative learning. The establishment of structure as an
important variable provides considerable incentive for researchers and
practitioners to experiment with and vary structures in CMC to result in a
considerably more systematic body of knowledge and understanding than is
currently available. This chapter provides but one set of insights into what is an
important issue in e-learning and networked learning contexts that are based in
CMC.
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165
Chapter 12
Collaboration and community through
simulation/role-play
Karen Murphy and Yakut Gazi
Introduction
As Web use in higher education increases, so does the need to provide learners with
authentic learning experiences for developing critical thinking skills for
participation in an increasingly complex telecommunications-oriented culture.
Official US reports have found ‘a relative paucity of true, original research
dedicated to explaining or predicting phenomena related to distance learning’
(Institute for Higher Education Policy, 1999, p 30) and called for research on
how people learn in the Internet age, how new tools support and assess learning
gains, and what kinds of organizational structures support these gains (Web-
Based Education Commission, 2000).
Garrison (2000) described the need for ‘sustained real two-way
communication’ (p 13) to be at the core of the educational experience, using
methods and technologies that incorporate a collaborative approach to the
learning transaction in distance education. Instructors have increasingly
incorporated learning transactions in their courses by involving learners in
threaded discussions, with the result that learners can create their own
democratic public culture as deliberators. According to Romiszowski (1997), the
most effective types of teaching-learning practices are ‘experiential exercises
followed by interpersonal interaction in small groups…with facilitators to guide
the group towards useful conclusions’ (p 33).
Problems related to providing socialization support for e-learners focus
primarily on instructors’ inability to incorporate experiential learning activities
that will foster interaction and collaboration among learners. Instructors may lack
the knowledge of how to implement such activities, they may be hesitant to try
such innovative practices at a distance, or they may not have the necessary
administrative or technological support. In the case of Web-based scenarios,
instructors may lack sufficient technical skills and time for acquiring those skills
(Naidu et al, 2000). Instructors need to know how to design their own
experiential learning activities or adapt existing activities and provide scaffolding
that will help learners to structure their own learning. One experiential activity
that may be used effectively in e-learning contexts is simulation/role-play.
COLLABORATION THROUGH SIMULATION/ROLE-PLAY 167
The goals for this chapter are to a) identify the characteristics of simulation/
role-plays that foster collaborative learning environments and development of e-
learning communities; and b) contribute to an understanding of how to design
and implement simulation/role-plays to provide socialization support for e-
learners. By encouraging socialization and interaction among students through
such experiential activities as simulation/role-play, instructors can foster
collaboration and community building in e-learning environments.
Review of the literature

Three compatible trends in the Internet age are constructivism, development of a
sense of community, and experiential activities. The constructivist paradigm is
the approach that most closely approximates Dewey’s (1938) call for active
learning. Learning environments involving experiential activities that provide for
interaction and collaboration may lead to the development of communities of
practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991).
Constructivism
Constructivism is the worldview that recognizes learning as the process of
constructing meaning about, or making sense of, our experiences (Vygotsky,
1978). Learning constructively, particularly in the social constructivist paradigm,
requires an environment situated in ‘coherent, meaningful, and purposeful
activities’ (Brown et al, 1989, p 34) designed to support collaboration, personal
autonomy and active learning. Collaborative learning refers to activities in which
small groups of people work together to accomplish shared goals to create
meaning, explore a topic, or improve skills online (Harasim et al, 1995). The
shift in roles from the instructor as a content expert to a facilitator of learning has
been accompanied by a shift from teacher-centred to learner-centred instruction
(Gunawardena, 1992).
Development of community
Through collaboration and interaction students may enhance their learning
through the development of a community. As Osterman (2000) described, a
community exists when its members experience a sense of belonging or personal
relatedness, which is important to students not only for their academic
achievement but also for their social and psychological well being. Communities
of learners and practice are social organizations in which knowledge, values,
identities and goals are shared (Jonassen, 1999) and have mechanisms for
sharing what is learnt (Bielaczyc and Collins, 1999). Lave and Wenger (1991)
proposed that when learners participate fully in the socially situated practices of
a community, learning is a process of becoming part of a community of practice.
Experiential activities
Self-directed and real-life experiences include interactive activities such as
smallgroup discussions, simulation games, project-based work, and collaborative
problem-solving activities to solve educational problems (Romiszowski and
Mason, 1996). For example, small-group discussions have dominated the online
literature (Harasim et al, 1995), whereas examples of simulation games used in e-
learning environments appear less frequently (Reader and Joinson, 1999), and
the guidance available for educators to develop simulations for delivery by the
Web is still rare (Cote and Jarvey, 1997). Project-based work online is gaining
increased attention as a type of problem-solving activity (Collis, 1997). Finally,
collaborative problem-solving activities in traditional and distance courses
include online tutorials between partners in classes in two countries (Cifuentes
and Shih, 2001) and research activities among classes in universities throughout
the world (Murphy et al, 1995).
Simulation/role-play activities
The terms simulation, game, role-play, simulation-game, role-play simulation
and role-playing games are used interchangeably in the literature (Tompkins,
1998).
A simulation game is a replication of real-life experience involving at least
two players who operate under explicitly set rules for achieving a predetermined
goal in a certain period of time. A simulation is a broad concept that typically
includes an element of role-play (Tompkins). Simulations imitate real-life
situations, whereas in role-playing the participant represents some character type
known in everyday life. Simulations usually involve students in decision
making, communicating and negotiating with others. Independent of the
terminology used, these techniques provide the students with ‘either a highly
simplified reproduction of part of a real or imaginary world or a structured
system that incorporates the material to be learned’ (van Ments, 1999, p 3).
Simulations
Examples of simulations of natural phenomena in computerized environments
for enhancing learning are numerous (McDonagh, 1999) and have proved to be
effective in increasing students’ learning gains (Geban et al, 1992).
Computerized simulations, especially in science, where students are given the
chance to explore and transform the concept or task, can replace real-life
experimentation or help carry out experiments or demonstrations such as the
Interactive Frog Dissection (Kinzie, 1994) that would otherwise be impossible
due to cost, perceived danger or damage, or time constraints. In computer
simulations, a physical object can be displayed on the computer screen, which
allows students to manipulate the object to learn more about it. Additionally, a
student may input an action; the computer reacts and provides feedback on the
consequences of the action. Students can also experience different roles, such as
social worker, parent, child and teacher through software programs that simulate
the experiences of people in social work (Cote and Jarvey, 1997).
Role-play
Role-play is the particular type of simulation concentrating attention on the
interaction of people (van Ments, 1999). In this type of simulation, functions
performed by different people under a variety of circumstances are analysed. The
idea of role-play is asking people to imagine that they are either themselves or
other people in certain situations and then imitate those people’s behaviour under
the given circumstances. By doing so, they learn about the people, or situation,
or both, through testing out their possible patterns of behaviour or examining the
interacting behaviour of the group (van Ments). Role-plays are advantageous in
terms of enabling students to express feelings easily, empathize with others and
understand their motivations. Such student-centred activities as simulations/role-
plays are significant in that the group can control content and pace of the
activity.
Online simulation/role-play
Simulation and role-play are an integral part of online environments such as
MOOs and MUDs. In these environments the participants are encouraged to
perform a role, and the definition and expectations of these roles differ from one
environment to another. MOO role-plays may pose a threat to community
relationships, especially when the use of nicknames or anonymous participation
is encouraged (Wellman and Gulia, 1999) or when competition rather than
collaboration is emphasized. A basic difference between role-playing in MOOs
and in e-learning environments is that the latter focus primarily on achieving
learning outcomes through a structured path and creating a community of
learners through collaboration. Simulations have been used frequently in
computer-assisted instruction (Cote and Jarvey, 1997), and role-plays are
employed commonly in MOOs (Turkle, 1998). More recently, however, both
simulations and role-plays are used in e-learning environments and even
developed by instructors using role-play simulation generators (Naidu et al,
2000). We present Mythica, a scenario-based simulation/ role-play activity in e-
learning courses, to add to this research literature.
Simulation/role-play in e-learning environments: Mythica

This chapter’s focus is on how to incorporate and integrate simulation/role-play
activities into online courses to provide socialization support for university
students. Two models were used in pursuing our goals: Jonassen’s (1999) model
Figure 12.1 From ‘Designing Constructivist Learning Environments’ (p. 218) by D.

Jonassen, in Instructional Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional
Theory, Vol. 2, by C.M.Reigeluth (Ed.), 1999, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, Adapted with
permission.
for designing constructivist learning environments, and Cifuentes et al’s (1997)
model of computer conferencing design considerations. Jonassen’s constructivist
learning environments model focuses on the problem, question, or project that
learners attempt to solve or resolve, with the aid of various interpretive and
intellectual supports. In this model, the learning activities (exploration,
articulation and reflection) are achieved with the instructional activities of
modelling, coaching and scaffolding (see Figure 12.1).
The Cifuentes et al model situates the Jonassen model in an e-learning
environment by presenting an interaction of key computer conferencing design
considerations. In the Cifuentes model (see Figure 12.2) the all-encompassing
requirement is adequate technological preparation, which surrounds the other
design considerations: two administrative design issues (grading system and
grouping), and three instructional design considerations (collaboration, relevance
and learner control). We selected these two models because together they include
key issues in a constructivist approach to integrating simulation/role-play
activities into online courses.
We describe the design and development of a simulation/role-play called
‘Mythica’ in a graduate course designed to provide a thorough overview of the
history, theory, research and practice of educational technology at Texas A&M
University. In each of four 14–week semester-long offerings of the course,
students accessed the Web site to obtain course information and contribute to
threaded discussions about occupations in the field, and they used FirstClass®
computer conference software to post their assignments and communicate with
their classmates and instructor.
Figure 12.2 From ‘Design Consideration for Computer Conferences’ by L.Cifuentes,

K.L.Murphy, R.Segur, and S.Kodali, 1997, Journal of Research on Computing in
Education, 30, p. 197. Adapted with permission. Copyright © 1997, ISTE (International
Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (US & Canada) or 541.302.3777
(Int’l), [email protected], www.iste.org. All rights reserved.
The course was designed for students to engage in constructivist learning

through a combination of independent and collaborative activities. The single
collaborative activity was for each student to co-facilitate one activity and
participate in the other activities, which were based on learning objectives and
both required and supplementary readings. The first three activities were
threaded discussions and the final activity was the simulation/role-play Mythica
(Murphy, Moran and Weems, 2000). Mythica was the final activity because of
the culminating nature of its content, which also gave students practice
facilitating and participating in three previous discussions. The facilitator groups
were formed at the beginning of each semester after students were asked to rank
their first three choices. The instructor then organized the facilitating groups by
taking into consideration the students’ rankings as well as learner characteristics
including country of origin, gender and e-learning experience. The students’
challenge for the simulation/role-play was to develop a proposal for teaching
English to the citizens of Mythica, a mythical oil-producing country comprised
of 18 islands and inhabited by people accustomed to learning by rote
memorization. The guiding questions to the short Mythica scenario are:
• Who is your target audience?

• What are your instructional goals and objectives?
• What instructional strategies and methods will you use?
• What delivery modes will you use?
• How will you provide for various forms of interaction (students with content,
teachers, other students, and technology)?
• How will you evaluate the students’ achievement and the program itself?
• How will you provide for the gradual transfer of ownership?
We analysed Mythica FirstClass conferences and evaluations in each course

offering and included ideas from a case study of project-based learning (Murphy
and Gazi, 2001). Through these analyses, we illustrate how a simple scenario-
based simulation/role-play can act as a pivotal force that incorporates the
instructor role and student roles—students-as-facilitators and students-as-
participants—within the technology infrastructure of a computer conference.
Figure 12.3 presents our model for integrating a simulation/role-play into an e-
learning environment. The next sections describe the elements of the figure as
exemplified by Mythica.
Nature of the activity

Project-based learning activities in online settings are intended to provide an
active, engaging and dynamic setting for small groups of learners to collaborate
in solving a problem and developing a product (Collis, 1997). Murphy and Gazi
(2001) identified three characteristics of project-based learning activities that
produce positive learning outcomes among e-learners: authentic activities,
collaborative work and communication via telecommunications, and
opportunities for knowledge enhancement and skill building. The nature of the
Mythica simulation/role-play activity offers e-learners active participation and
application of knowledge to a simulated real world experience. The learning
objectives for the Mythica activity facilitated active learning of content: the
students used the readings to meet the challenge presented in the scenario, so
that the content became ‘a means to an end, not an end in itself’ (Oliver, 1999, p
244). In student evaluations, Mythica facilitators commented on the activity’s
effectiveness in encouraging active learning and covering the content in an
entertaining and informative manner, and participants reflected that the activities
encouraged active learning, made them feel involved, and covered the objectives
effectively (Murphy, Moran and Weems, 2000), as corroborated by a student: ‘I
can see where the assignments are designed to build on each other. Mythica tied
them all together in a practical scenario’ (p 3). The simulation evolved into a
simulation/role-play when facilitators asked participants to adopt such roles as
instructional designer or technology transition team coordinator to develop a
successful proposal for Mythica.
Technology infrastructure
An institution’s technology infrastructure centres on the physical infrastructure
but also requires human support, including technology and educational
technology support staff, instructional design staff, and subject experts (Bates,
2000). Similarly, Evans and Nation (2000) charged that we ‘give attention to the
provision of adequate infrastructure, and the skilled humans to support it, as well
Figure 12.3 Model for integrating a simulation/role-play into an e-learning course
as supporting thoroughly collaborative efforts in developing the new pedagogies’

(p 172).
The physical infrastructure of each course included the FirstClass server
software, and interactive videoconferencing for one course offering that used
videoconferences in alternating sessions about half the time. Researchers
recommend establishing ‘boundaries around a protected space’ in which to work
and communicate (Palloff and Pratt, 1999, p 61). FirstClass provided such a safe
place through a complex mix of email, chat rooms, threaded discussions, file
attachments and dedicated workspaces for collaborative editing of text files.
Mythica’s human infrastructure consisted of a variety of personnel in addition
to the instructor. At the beginning of each semester, the instructor provided an
orientation and training session, while library staff provided a seminar on
accessing resources online. The technology support staff included computer
support personnel for all courses and videoconference staff for one course. In
addition, graduate assistants were hired occasionally as instructional designers or
teaching assistants. Finally, students with FirstClass experience acted as peer
tutors to novices, helping them complete lab exercises. In one course offering,
students at both videoconference sites took turns as technology facilitators,
thereby enabling the activity facilitators to focus on content.
Roles of instructor and of students

The instructor, the students-as-facilitators, and the students-as-participants
adopted specific roles and used a variety of instructional and learning strategies
to conduct the Mythica activity. Each role is integral to the overall success of the
simulation/ role-play activity and builds on the technology infrastructure.
The instructor provided modelling, scaffolding and coaching (Jonassen,
1999). She modelled appropriate conferencing behaviours at the beginning of the
semester by facilitating a threaded discussion and giving immediate feedback to
contributors. Scaffolding included organizing the readings; presenting the
scenario, questions, and learning objectives; and creating private FirstClass
conferences and collaborative documents. The instructor’s coaching role
involved distributing facilitation by dividing the task into component parts and
assigning different parts to different people, followed by urging the Mythica
facilitators to observe the process of previous activity facilitators. Throughout,
the instructor monitored the facilitator discussions, interjecting both substantive
comments (eg, ‘Maybe Group Y (and Group X) need reminders about CAI
(computer-assisted instruction) for tutorials, drill and practice, simulations’) and
supportive comments (eg, ‘You have such fantastic ideas! Keep ’em rolling!’).
Coaching also included both meeting with the facilitators in a real-time chat just
before they opened their activity and monitoring the daily progress of the
activity.
The students-as-facilitators created group-learning contracts, which provided
an agreement of their responsibilities (Murphy, Mahoney and Harvell, 2000).
Mythica facilitators were responsible for presenting the simulation/role-play and
the related questions to the participants. Depending on the number of
participants, the facilitators formed the activity groups. The facilitators acted as
‘intelligent novices’ (Brown et al, 1993, p 190) by providing similar scaffolding
to the participants (Murphy, Mahoney and Harvell, 2000). They used
collaborative documents to develop their plans and create outlines and
documents, taking care to be ‘very detailed in the writing of the procedures for
the activity…look(ing) at every detail of the process from the perspective of the
participants’. The facilitators’ coaching activities included replying, weaving
responses and sending private email to individual participants to encourage them
to participate by ‘more than just post(ing) a response’. In contrast to the other
activity facilitators, Mythica facilitators used varied instructional strategies to
increase collaboration and reduce competition among participants by increasing
conflict between the participants and such external constraints as time limits and
creativity (Thiagarajan, 1998). Facilitators’ key instructional strategies for
modelling, coaching and scaffolding included the following:
• work together diligently and regularly, adapting to each other’s schedules;

• build upon previous groups’ experiences and knowledge gained in earlier
activities;
• create a role-play environment;

• provide immediate feedback to participants with ancillary information and by
asking pointed questions.
The students-as-participants were responsible for following the instructions of

the students-as-facilitators in answering the scenario questions, which helped
them develop their group Mythica proposals. This procedure, as described by
one participant, involved substantial time to prepare for the activity: ‘I have to
read and organize the thoughts in the books, then answer the questions and
observe the discussion among all participants and facilitators. The best stance of
a participant is always to be ready to answer and give feedback.’ The participants
responded in threaded discussions or collaborative documents, as defined by the
facilitators, to help their team members refine their replies. In general, they
recognized the value of trying to understand each other as they worked toward
common goals. For example, one student concluded, ‘I listened to the others and
saw the difference and similarities among us. Sometimes I needed to
compromise…and sometimes I needed to stick to my opinions. Whatever I did was
to show I am a responsible and collaborative person to work with others for the
goals of successfully finishing the project.’
The Mythica simulation/role-play generally fostered a sense of community
among the students. Both facilitators and participants developed communities of
practice that resulted from the instructor’s role as a facilitator of learning and
corresponding focus on learner-centred instruction (Gunawardena, 1992). The
group-learning contracts guided the facilitators in developing a community as
they established common behaviour guidelines and communication protocols,
identified member roles and developed contingency plans. An element of fun
often accompanied the facilitators’ activity planning, as shown in the following
excerpt from a chat:
Facilitator A: Bye guys—It’s been fun!
Facilitator B: Hooooooowl!!!!!
Facilitator A: We shall conquer the Mythicans
Facilitator C: Charge-e-e-e-e-eeeeeeeeeee
As a result of the facilitators’ collaboration and scaffolding, the participants often
experienced belonging (Osterman, 2000) and were able to ‘cross a threshold from
feeling like outsiders to feeling like insiders’ (Wegerif, 1998) in their simulation/
role play.
Recommendations
This chapter aimed to present simulation/role-play as a scenario-based
experiential activity to create a collaborative learning environment and a sense of
community among e-learners. Based on the Jonassen (1999) and Cifuentes et al
(1997) models, we described a collaborative learning environment for both
students-as-facilitators and students-as-participants. Some Mythica facilitators

motivated the participants by giving them more control over their learning, as
suggested by Cifuentes et al, through such activities as role-playing and having
the groups post their own final proposals in FirstClass. As a conversation or
collaboration tool, FirstClass afforded the capability of exploration, articulation
and reflection recommended by Jonassen but did not provide for alternative
discourse structures such as argumentation and problem-solving (Jonassen and
Remidez, 2002). How can we write or adapt simple scenarios into simulation/
role-plays and design them in elegant ways that both foster socialization and
allow for divergent thinking, as Smith and Stacey suggest in this section of the
book? We recommend several design considerations for instructors/designers to
enhance collaboration and community through simulation/ role-play activities in
e-learning:
• conduct simulation/role-play activities first in a face-to-face mode to build

confidence;
• schedule simulation/role-play activities for a greater length of time than other
activities and for later in the semester, after students participate in less
complex activities;
• form appropriately sized student groups of facilitators (three to four) and
participants (seven to nine);
• provide implicit and explicit scaffolding that includes guidelines for time- and
task-management;
• adopt the role of coach, giving control to student activity facilitators to
encourage collaboration rather than competition.
A future possibility is to use melded information and communications

technologies to deliver simulation/role-play, such as Web video instead of a text-
based environment. With the advent of technologies of digital content production
and dissemina tion and efforts to resolve bandwidth problems, experiential
activities such as simulation/role-play can be enhanced to resemble real-life
experiences more closely. Tools that could be used currently include Tegrity®
(http://www.3com. com/solutions/en_US/solutionslab/alliance_tegrity.html) and
Virage® (http:// www.virage.com/), which enable the creation, management and
distribution of digital media. Universal design and equity issues surrounding the
use of multimedia products are gaining importance, with efforts underway to
address them. As professionals tackle bandwidth issues, these and more
sophisticated tools will be accessible to broader audiences, creating richer
experiential activities in e-learning.
Further research can provide insight to instructors and designers in adapting
experiential activities, designing a course infrastructure, and preparing students
to facilitate the activity. Continuing investigation of strategies used by
instructors, students-as-facilitators and students-as-participants will shed light on
the productivity of e-learning experiences and environments. Communication
patterns among facilitators and among participants as groups can be examined

from a discourse analytic point of view to reveal the speech acts, conversational
patterns and even the power structures, to have a better understanding of group
dynamics and paths leading to success.
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Part 4
Assessment of learning outcomes

Chapter 13
Broadening assessment strategies with
information technology
Catherine McLoughlin
Traditional and Web-based assessment compared

Educators can be in no doubt of the demands of society for lifelong capable
learners who are able to perform cognitive and metacognitive tasks and
demonstrate competencies such as problem solving, critical thinking,
questioning, searching for information, making judgements and evaluating
information (Oliver and McLoughlin, 2001). The illustration of a continuum of
assessment types in Figure 13.1 represents the changing nature of assessment,
showing a transition from a focus on testing to a focus on learning and transfer
of understanding.
Figure 13.1 The continuum of assessment types
The traditional approach to assessment was largely a form of objective testing,

which valued students’ capacity to memorize facts and then recall them during a
test situation. Testing was concerned with measuring a range of cognitive skills,
though many of these tests relied on quantifiable approaches rather than
qualitative displays of skills and knowledge. Magone et al (1994) called this the
‘one right answer mentality’.
Another form of assessment depicted in the continuum is the measurement of
competencies, or what is called ‘sequestered problem solving’ (Schwartz et al,
2000). In these contexts students are asked to solve problems in isolation and
without the resources that are typically available in the real world such as texts,
Web-resources and peers. Often these tests of aptitude are single shot, and
summative rather than formative. In contrast, assessment that supports learning
and knowledge transfer provides the basis for future learning and continuing
motivation to learn. This approach is sometimes called the ‘alternative
182 ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING OUTCOMES
assessment movement’, as it is concerned with authentic performance (Cumming

and Maxwell, 1999). Both testing and measuring competence as forms of
assessment have been critiqued as being controlling, limiting and contrary to
student-centred teaching and learning. Morgan and O’Reilly (1999) add the
following criticisms of traditional assessment practices:
• a lack of variety and autonomy and student choice;

• lack of applied work-based and project-based learning;
• overuse of summative forms of assessment;
• limited use of peer and self-assessment strategies.
Other indicators of the need to rethink online assessment have come from Bull
and McKenna (2000) who argue that ‘the development and integration of
computer-aided assessment has been done in an ad hoc manner’. In a similar
vein, Angelo (1999) maintains that we need a more compelling vision of
assessment, research-based guidelines for learner-centred assessment, and a new
mental model of assessment. While computer-assisted assessment is rapidly
gaining ground as a convenient and cost-effective means of assessing learning
outcomes, there is a need to adopt more holistic models of learning that focus on
processes rather than outcomes. Later in this chapter innovative forms of
assessment are proposed that capitalize on networked learning, opportunities for
self and peer assessment and the creation of authentic learning environments that
enable learning to be monitored and assessed in both formative and summative
ways.
Pedagogical models of online assessment

The changing focus of pedagogy that has been achieved through online learning
and networked technologies is readily evident in the forums for collaboration and
interaction among distributed learners (Coomey and Stephenson, 2001). As
increasing numbers of students go online, one of the major challenges is how
to reengineer courses, increase flexibility and quality and assess students online
(Collis and Moonen, 2001). Looking at the array of computer-based tools
available, it is possible to identify several theoretical frameworks and
pedagogical models that drive online assessment. Educators and instructional
designers need to know how these frameworks can guide the design of online
assessment tasks, and how elements of each are relevant in designing formative
and summative assessment tasks. Below, some frameworks are identified that
can be useful starting points for assessment. These look at assessment from the
varying perspectives of learning outcomes, resource-based learning, process-
based learning and authentic assessment. In the final analysis this section will
propose an holistic model for online assessment that synthesizes elements from all
approaches.
BROADENING ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES WITH IT 183
Learning outcomes and assessment

In planning learning and assessment tasks, one view is that designers must have a
clear notion of intended learning outcomes. Examples of desired learning
outcomes cited by Ramsden (1992) are comprehension of key concepts and ways
of understanding in a discipline, and the development of abilities to integrate
theoretical and practical knowledge in professional applications. There are a
number of schemes that describe a range of learning objectives and break down
learning objectives into component parts or hierarchies (Bloom, 1956; Gagne et
al, 1992). Of these the most popular has been Bloom’s taxonomy, which has
been applied by several researchers in creating computer-based tasks to assess
various kinds of performance (Dalgarno, 1998; King and Duke-Williams, 2001).
In a recent update of Bloom’s taxonomy, six levels of objectives remain linked to
performance in understanding, applying, synthesizing and applying knowledge
(Anderson et al, 2000). For test generation, this taxonomy is likely to remain a
useful starting point for designing assessment, but lacks reference to processes of
learning and the context of assessment.
Resource-based assessment
Web-based and distance learning are based on the notion that learners can access
a wide range of resources, often not prescribed by the teacher in order to pursue
their own learning goals (Oliver and McLoughlin, 1999). Often resource-based
learning assumes that students have a repertoire of learning skills and strategies,
such as information management, search strategies and information literacy
skills. This means that learning and support of skills must be balanced with the
assessment of students’ performance. Assessment in resource-based learning
contexts needs to ensure that learners are given sufficient feedback on how they
approach tasks, and provide well-structured tasks that enable students to develop
a sense of how well they are coping with these demands (MacDonald et al,
1999). The implications of resource-based learning are that assessment tasks
need to be flexible, reveal the nature of students’ prior knowledge, address
misconceptions and misunderstandings and ensure that appropriate and timely
feedback is given.
Authentic assessment
In order to reflect the complexity of learning, it is now recognized that
assessment should reflect more than a single aspect of performance, or
overemphasize cognitive outcomes (Bennett et al, 2000). Frameworks that
challenge one-dimensional views of student performance recognize that
assessment tasks need to reflect a number of core components of performance
and competence ie, functional skills, cognitive abilities, personal skills and
values/professional capabilities (Cheetham and Chivers, 1996). This expanded
Figure 13.2 Authentic, performance-based assessment
view of assessment is also referred to as authentic, performance-based

assessment, the main components of which are depicted in Figure 13.2. Each of
these elements needs further elaboration.
Performance
This aspect of authentic assessment focuses on the need to ensure that
performance is observed and measured through actual demonstration or
execution of a task or real-life performance (Wiggins, 1998). In addition, the
performance should encompass the whole task and not just part of it. In a case
study presented later in this chapter, Web-based learning is shown to have the
capacity to support the principles of authentic assessment and whole task
performance.
Competence
Competence-based performance is the second dimension of authentic
assessment, because of its link to real world contexts. However, the literature
often uses the terms authentic and performance assessment interchangeably.
According to Baker and O’Neill (1994, p 15) ‘Performance-based assessment
may also emphasize authenticity, that is the task is intended to be inherently
valuable to student.’ Reeves and Okey (1996) propose that the distinction
surrounds the degree of authenticity in the context in which the performance is
conducted. It is now recognized that multimedia and Web-based learning
environments provide settings and conditions that support active demonstrations
of competence (Herrington and Herrington, 1998).
Expertise and problem solving

The third dimension of authentic performance recognizes complexity and expert
performance, and the need to assess higher order cognition (Newman and
Archbald, 1992). Examples of technology-supported assessment include the use
of anchored environments where students engage in complex scenarios that

require problem-solving skills (Harper et al, 2000).
Situated learning
This dimension recognizes that context affects what is learnt and assessed, and
that the context of assessment should match as closely as possible the context of
learning and performance. However, as learners are also expected to be able to
transfer learning from one context to another, there are degrees of situatedness.
In a study of the use of multimedia authoring, McFarlane et al (2000) showed
that assessment tasks based on multimedia authoring enabled students to make
their conceptual and procedural thinking explicit, and enabled meaningful
judgements about their cognitive achievements.
Figure 13.3 presents an extension of the four aspects of assessment depicted
above, with the integration of performance, authenticity, competence, situated
learning and problem solving. The dimensions are an adaptation of those
developed by Reeves (2000), who proposed a number of core principles that can
be applied to the design of constructivist online environments. These principles
have been adapted to provide specific parameters depicted in Figure 13.3 to
guide the design of online assessment tasks utilizing communications
technologies.
Practitioners and theorists are in agreement that computer-based and online
forms of assessment need to be reviewed in order to ensure that tasks are diverse
and capable of offering multiple measures of cognition, skill, performance and
higher order cognition (Reeves, 2000; Thelwall, 2000). The next section
provides examples of online assessment that meet these principles and that allow
for diagnosis, monitoring and demonstration of competence and that broaden the
range of competencies that can be assessed.
Examples of online assessment that support multiple

indicators of performance
There is a huge array of online resources, tools and software now available for
online assessment. Table 13.1 presents a summary of these, showing that
summative, formative and diagnostic approaches are possible in computer-based
environments.
In the next section, examples are provided of assessment types that showcase
learner achievement in a range of skills. These assessment tasks include:
• digital portfolios;
• networked peer assessment;
• problem solving online.
Taking into account the principles for alternative assessment mentioned earlier,
several examples can be provided that demonstrate how assessment practices
enable a range of learning outcomes and competencies to be fostered, scaffolded
and assessed online.
Table 13.1 Examples of online and computer-based assessment strategies*
*Examples of tools and assessment practices involving these examples can be found in
Brown et al (1999) and on the CAA website at: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/ltd/flicaa/
conf2001/
Figure 13.3 Pedagogical framework for online assessment adapted from Reeves &
Reeves (1997)
Example 1: Networked peer assessment

The assessment task described here is taken from a course of study in which
adult learners and professionals seek to develop their skills in multimedia design,
in a tertiary degree programme. The framework used in the course to promote the
learning process is shown in Figure 13.4. It is focused on the promotion of
independent learning using a listserv and online resources, peer support and
collaboration, which in turn promote the development of professional skills and
process knowledge. Also, as part of an authentic learning task, students share
their knowledge with their industry partners, and work in teams to create
multimedia products that meet industry specifications. The task involves the
creation of a Web site or the design of an e-commerce business product to meet
industry needs. This is the real world task that students engage in and it is also a
formative assessment task. Students work in teams to prepare a project plan, a
project specification and an actual product that meets industry standards. Three
sets of assessment criteria are used in the assessment process: those provided by
peers who work in teams to provide feedback on project design; those provided
by team members themselves (self-assessment) and those provided by the tutor,
seeking alignment with course objectives.
The technology provides the medium for display of the product, but also
supports process skills, communication and asynchronous discussion of
assessment criteria. The social scaffolding of learning takes place on the listserv,
which provides scope for learners to:
• negotiate projects with industry from initial stage to completion;
• discuss and share ideas through asynchronous conferencing;
• review and discuss criteria for self and peer assessment;
• engage in peer review of draft project plans;
• elicit feedback from industry partners on the quality of the product.
The online environment supports the social and cognitive aspects of assessment
and makes the process transparent, formative and integrative. Real life problems
are essentially multidimensional, and this assessment task provides learners with
multiple criteria that can be applied to create a worthwhile product. Additionally
the skills to work effectively in a team are crucial within this environment
and therefore the assessment of both group and individual efforts are part of the
assessment system.
Example 2: Problem solving online
Recent research in assessment shows that teachers are beginning to develop more
purposeful environments to assess higher order thinking skills and to gather both
qualitative and quantitative data as supporting evidence (Kendle and Northcote,
2000). Web-based assessment enables peer and group assessment and, by
allowing students to work together, helps them communicate and share ideas.
Oliver and McLoughlin (2001) provide an example of a Web-based system with
the infrastructure for a learning activity whereby learners are organized into
Figure 13.4 Student assessment process in a networked peer learning task (McLoughlin
and Luca, 2001)
small groups, within their larger class cohort. The Web-based system provides the
following functionalities:
• a series of weekly problems are presented online and each week students work
and collaborate in the Web-based environment to create a group solution;
• once a group has posted its solution, it can view the solutions of other groups;
• each group is required to read the solutions of the others and to select the best
solutions for commentary (a form of peer assessment);
— the class tutors add their marks to provide an overall mark for each group
solution;
— the best solutions from each workshop are displayed and students can
review these;
— the system maintains a record of the marks obtained by each group and
shows this in graphical form for each problem;
— at the end of the course, the system provides the marks for each student
across the range of problems solved.
This activity has been demonstrated to provide many learning opportunities and
advantages. These include the following:
• Students find the problem-solving activities extremely motivating.

• The activities enable on and off-campus learners to be part of the same
learning environment.
• Learners can support each other through activities in the shared learning
spaces.
• The activities encourage and support the development of inquiry skills in
using the Web for evaluation of information.
• Students develop generic skills in forming arguments and creating logical
answers as they seek to provide solutions to the problems presented online.
There is sound theoretical support for this form of online assessment environment
(Segers and Dochy, 2001). Several recent studies affirm that online problem-
solving tasks provide effective support for learning:
• A problem-based learning environment encourages learners to reflect on their

ideas and strategies and to articulate their views (McLoughlin and Luca,
2001; Oliver and McLoughlin, 2001).
• Students learn from the communication and interaction with their peers in the
problem-solving process (eg, Jonassen et al, 1999).
• The scope for communication and collaboration provides for meaningful
interactions and purposeful engagement in the learning process (McConnell,
2000).
Example 3: Using online portfolios

As stated previously, the goals of the contemporary curriculum are now oriented
towards more complex curricular objectives and more complex performances,
and so it is essential that assessment practices enable students to demonstrate
skills, knowledge and competencies in diverse and meaningful ways, and to
mirror professional practice (McLoughlin and Luca, 2001). One of the most
powerful means of supporting a range of skills through online assessment is to
allow students to create an online portfolio. Many institutions have now
constructed electronic portfolio systems on the Web as a means of supporting
and monitoring assessment process skills and enabling students to create an
electronic file of learning resources and personally meaningful reflections on
study experiences. Mostert and Knoetze (2001) for example, offered students
specially designed shells and templates from which to construct their electronic
portfolios. Students maintain the portfolio online and it can be accessed by tutors
who can provide feedback, or put on display for other students for peer review
(Chang, 2001). Some examples of the types of content that students can submit
in the portfolio are:
• daily notes on learning progress;

• learning notes gained from texts and conferences;
• self-reflections on learning processes;
• peer evaluations of work;
• questions about areas needing attention;
• special projects and achievements.
The development of a portfolio is a dynamic process that is integrated with both

formative and summative assessment processes. One of its strengths is that it
gives students greater control and ownership of the learning process while
providing scope for self and peer assessment and the showcasing of a broad
range of achievements.
Overcoming the disadvantages of traditional assessment

Computer-based assessment may suffer an ‘image problem’ as some assume it is
capable only of summative testing using multiple-choice tests derived from item
banks. Increasingly, computer-based assessment is enabling innovative
approaches to formative assessment that ‘close the gap between actual and
desired levels of performance’ (Sheingold and Frederiksen, 1994). A number of
factors have already been cited concerning the potential value of networked
learning environments and computer-based assessment. Current software
development and the interactive capabilities of the Web enable the creation of
procedural, conceptual, cognitive and collaborative assessment tasks and support
student expression of prior knowledge, experience and learning in personally
meaningful ways.
The future of online assessment

Already, in terms of pedagogy, implementation and administration, computer-
delivered assessment is outstripping conventional forms of assessment and, in
the words of Bennett (2001) is ‘reinventing assessment’. What is the evidence
for this? Certainly, online assessment is capable of greater flexibility, cost-
effectiveness and time saving. It has been these attributes that have made it
appealing in an age of competitive higher education funding and resource
constraints. Current online designs can support group and individual feedback,
self-testing by students, flexibility and the diagnosis of misconceptions so that
early intervention can be planned. The added benefit of computer-based
assessment is its motivational and self-regulatory nature. By allowing students to
test their own knowledge and understanding, they can decide when, where and
how often to take a test, ensuring preparedness for learning.
In terms of pedagogy, the underpinnings of online assessment are solidly
constructivist and have the capacity to offer multiple indicators of student
performance. Current demands of employers and universities are for graduates
with cognitive and social competencies such as critical thinking, team skills,
communication and problem solving. Since the goals of learning are aimed
towards achievement of specific competencies, assessment practices must also
generate opportunities for students to interpret, analyse and evaluate arguments.
Online assessment affords the tools, media and transparency to meet these
demands.
In summary, the communicative and collaborative attributes of online
environments and new software for designing tests, quiz items and a range of
tasks that can be created exemplify a reinvention of traditional pedagogy and an
holistic approach to learning. First, the integration of learning and assessment is
possible in these environments by offering learners multiple avenues to
demonstrate achievement, offer feedback and develop both the processes and
outcomes of learning. Second, online settings for learning provide access to
resources, peers and a range of authentic tasks within a social context where
discussion and critical analysis are central. In new assessment approaches, what
is most important is to extend, foster and showcase the competencies required
for real-life practice. Trends in assessment have moved from a culture of testing
and standardized tests to a culture of learning. In this chapter, examples have
been provided of learner-centred tasks that capitalize on the social and
interactive capabilities of the Web to provide levers for rethinking assessment
and creating multiple indicators of learning achievement.
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Chapter 14
Applying assessment principles and
expanding the focus of assessment to
enhance learning online
Alex Radloff and Barbara de la Harpe
Introduction
There is often a gap between what universities espouse as the outcomes of
successful university study and what is actually taught and learned. More often
than not, the emphasis is on discipline-related content knowledge (eg facts,
procedures and principles) rather than on other aspects of learning such as skills
and attitudes that underpin lifelong learning, as well as the factors involved in the
learning process itself (Biggs, 1999; Hativa and Goodyear, 2002). This content
knowledge emphasis is often reflected in the types of assessment tasks students are
set, regardless of the mode of instruction. It is not surprising that in most courses
content knowledge is the main focus of assessment since many academics regard
themselves as content experts and may find their role as teachers challenging. As
Sutherland (1996, p 91) points out:
(t)he reasons that faculty find it difficult to assess non-content outcomes

are the same as the reasons they find it difficult to consider using new
teaching approaches. Faculty are experts in their field of study. They have
spent their professional lives developing skill and confidence in their
abilities as chemists, sociologists, rhetoricians, and art historians.Their
training and focus has been on content, and few have been supervised or
mentored in teaching and evaluating students.
Moreover, the assessment tasks that are set may not always be informed by
sound assessment principles and practices.
The new educational technologies can be a trigger for reconsidering what and
how we assess. For academics engaged in online course development, as is the
case when developing courses for any mode, it means that they need to
understand and apply the principles of effective assessment when designing
learning environments online.
In this chapter, we explore the role of assessment in learning based on current
theory and research and present the case for expanding assessment to encompass
more than content knowledge. We provide examples of assessment tools and
tasks that can be used in online courses to assess content as well as process
learning outcomes and how students develop as learners. Our aim is to encourage
developers to include in online courses assessment tasks that expand and
enhance learning outcomes.
The role of assessment in learning

Assessment plays a crucial role in what and how students learn and what and
how teachers teach (Biggs, 1999; Dochy, 2001). Indeed, as has been pointed out
by many researchers, assessment drives the curriculum. Both students and teachers
pay attention to those aspects of a course that are assessed and may ignore those
that are not, irrespective of the stated learning objectives for the course.
Assessment sends messages about what is important and valued in a course
(Sambell et al, 1999) and students will respond accordingly (Brown et al, 1997;
Scouller, 1998).
Principles of effective assessment

Assessment is most likely to enhance online learning when the design of
assessment tasks is informed by principles of effective assessment. These
principles have been well documented in a number of publications including,
among others, the American Association for Higher Education Assessment
Forum’s nine principles of good practice for assessing student learning, an
assessment manifesto (Brown et al, 1996), the code of practice for assessment
developed by the British Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (Race,
2001, pp 33–34) and seven steps to fair assessment (Suskie, 2000). The
following assessment principles are particularly pertinent to enhancing learning:
• aligning assessment with learning objectives and learning activities;

• using a range of assessment tasks;
• developing and communicating assessment criteria;
• using both formative and summative assessment;
• including peer and self-assessment; and
• providing prompt and constructive feedback.
Assessment needs to be carefully aligned with the learning objectives and

learning activities, since assessment influences the learning approach that
students adopt (Biggs, 1999). If assessment tasks focus on content knowledge
only and not on understanding and skills or on the process of learning, even
though these latter may be included in the learning objectives, students will focus
on what is being assessed, namely, recall of content. Aligning assessment with
learning objectives and learning activities is a prerequisite for the design of
effective online courses.
APPLYING ASSESSMENT PRINCIPLES 197
Different assessment tasks are suited for assessing different learning outcomes
and each type of assessment task has its strengths and weaknesses (Brown et al,
1997; Race, 2001; Radloff and Wright, 2000). For example, short-answer tests
tend to focus on knowledge, are easy to mark and are perceived as ‘objective’,
while essays tend to focus on understanding, are more difficult to mark and are
perceived as ‘subjective’. Moreover, students need opportunities to demonstrate
their learning in ways that are compatible with their strengths as learners (Biggs,
1999). In online courses, wherever possible, assessment should include a range
of tasks to take into account the breadth of learning outcomes and students’
diverse talents and ways of knowing.
Whatever form the assessment takes, students benefit from knowing what
their performance will be judged on and the standard required to meet different
levels of achievement. Having clearly articulated criteria and standards also
increases the reliability of marking and facilitates the provision of targeted
feedback that gives students information about what they have done well and
helps them focus on areas that need improvement. Involving students in
identifying the assessment criteria can help them better understand the purpose
of the assessment task and how they can prepare for it (Race, 1995). This is
especially important in online courses when self and peer assessment of learning
is used.
Both formative and summative assessments are important for learning
(Nightingale et al, 1996). Formative assessment provides information about
progress in learning, while summative assessment provides information about the
learning outcomes as a result of a learning activity. The same assessment task
may provide either formative or summative assessment information depending at
which point in learning it is used. Formative assessment is particularly helpful in
shaping student behaviour and in providing feedback to the teacher about the
effectiveness of different learning tasks for achieving the desired learning
outcomes. Formative assessment is especially valuable when learning is done
online because of the importance of regular feedback for pacing learning and
staying on task.
Peer and self-assessment have the advantage of involving students in the
assessment process in ways that support their own learning as well as their
development as learners (Topping, 1998). Having the opportunity to review and
comment on others’ work can help students clarify their thinking and
understanding as well as gauge their efforts against the standard of work being
produced by other students. It can also enhance collaboration and effective group
work (Brown et al, 1997; Hinett and Thomas, 1999). Furthermore, experience
with peer and self-assessment can help students develop the skills and
confidence they will need for lifelong learning. When well planned and
implemented, self and peer assessment can be as reliable as single or double
marking and can encourage and reinforce peer interaction and collaboration
(Brown et al, 1997). These aspects of learning are particularly challenging to
achieve in online courses.
Providing prompt and constructive feedback is a key factor in supporting

learning and maintaining student effort. As Boud (1991, p 29) points out:
one of the most valuable contributions anyone can make to another

person’s learning is constructive feedback. Whether as a student or as a
teacher each one of us has the capacity to provide useful information to
other people which will help them to learn more effectively.
To be most effective, feedback needs to be timely, clear, specific, meaningful to

the learner and realistic in terms of the overall learning objectives. Ensuring that
students receive regular feedback is particularly important in online courses
where there may be few opportunities for more informal types of feedback that
occur in campus-based courses.
Applying these assessment principles consistently in online courses will
increase student engagement in learning, improve the quality of their learning
outcomes and enhance their satisfaction with the learning experience.
Expanding the focus of assessment

Much assessment is used in ways that fail to provide appropriate feedback about
important aspects of learning and learning outcomes other than content
knowledge and thus contribute little to the development of students as effective
learners. The traditional view of teaching and learning tends to focus on
assessment of content knowledge and on academic achievement as the main
outcome of learning, that is, the products of learning rather than the how and
why of student learning, in other words, the motivational, affective, cognitive
and metacognitive factors in learning (McKeachie et al, 1986). This is so, despite
the considerable evidence that these factors have a major influence on the quality
of learning and on learning outcomes (see de la Harpe, 1998, for a summary of
the literature; de la Harpe and Radloff, 2001).
Motivational factors include student interest and involvement in learning such
as beliefs in the importance and value of different learning activities and
confidence in being able to achieve learning goals. Affective factors include
student emotional reactions—both positive and negative—to learning, that is,
feelings associated with learning. Cognitive factors focus on how students learn,
remember and understand and include problem solving, thinking and the use of a
variety of learning strategies such as rehearsal, elaboration and organization.
Metacognitive factors include student knowledge of the learning process and of
themselves as learners as well as control of the learning process through
planning, monitoring, evaluating and adapting learning.
Both students and teachers generally have little knowledge of how these
factors influence learning and learning outcomes. As a result, students are
disadvantaged as learners since, as Cross (1998, p 7) notes:
(m)ostly, students get grades that tell them how they have done relative to
their classmates. That information is not useful feedback on their progress
as learners, nor does it do anything to help students develop skills for self-
assessment.
Teachers too may be disadvantaged in that they rarely seek feedback from
students about students’ progress as learners or about whether and how students
are becoming effective learners—information that can inform their teaching
practice. When teachers do seek feedback, they tend to ask students to comment
on a narrow range of teaching activities rather than on how students are learning
(Powney and Hall, 1998).
As a result, neither students nor teachers are able to make informed decisions
about learning or teaching despite the fact that if ‘the improvement of learning is
the priority for the twenty-first century, teachers and students need to be able to
use the results of their assessment to improve their own performance’ (Cross,
1998, p 7). This is encouraged when assessment is expanded to include not only
a focus on students’ content knowledge but also on how they are developing as
learners in terms of motivation, affect, cognition and metacognition.
Examples of assessment tools and tasks

There are a variety of assessment tools and tasks that can be used to expand
assessment to include motivational, affective, cognitive and metacognitive
aspects of learning. These can take the form of questionnaires and surveys,
interviews, writing tasks and teacher constructed techniques. One or more of
these tools can be used as an integral part of a course in any discipline and many
if not all can be designed for use online. How some of these can be used as part
of an online course is described below using three examples. The examples focus
on assessing one or more of the following aspects of learning:
• motivational aspects such as interest in and attitude to learning, level of

confidence as learners and expectations of the outcomes of learning;
• affective aspects such as feelings about the learning task and self as learner as
well as managing both positive and negative feelings;
• cognitive aspects such as use of learning strategies like memorization, note-
making, summarizing, identifying main ideas and categorizing information, as
well as time-management, use of resources and help-seeking; and
• metacognitive aspects such as awareness and knowledge of the learning
process, the learning environment and the self as learner, as well as planning,
monitoring, evaluating and adapting learning.
Assessing motivational, cognitive and metacognitive aspects

One way of assessing student motivation for learning and the cognitive and
metacognitive strategies they are using to learn and how these may change as a
result of learning experiences, is to ask them to complete the Motivated Learning
Strategies Questionnaire (MSLQ).
The MSLQ (Pintrich et al, 1991) is a standardized 81–item Likert-type self-
report questionnaire designed to measure students’ motivational orientations and
learning strategy use. It consists of two sections—Motivation and Learning. The
Motivation section includes items such as ‘The most satisfying thing for me in this
course is trying to understand the content as thoroughly as possible’, ‘It is my
own fault if I don’t learn the material in this course’ and ‘I have an uneasy, upset
feeling when I take an exam’. The Learning Strategies section includes items
such as ‘When I study the readings for this course I outline the material to help
me organize my thoughts’, ‘Before I study new material thoroughly I often skim
it to see how it is organized’ and ‘Even when course materials are dull and
uninteresting, I manage to keep working until I finish’. The full MSLQ takes
approximately 20 to 30 minutes to complete. A quick MSLQ version focusing on
metacognitive factors is available at http://www.ulc.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/
MSLQ.exe?option=generatetest.
Students can be required to complete the MSLQ at the start of an online course
and again at the end of the course or after they have completed a mid-course
assessment task. They can then be asked to analyse their responses and write a self-
reflective commentary on what changes they will make to how they learn. Marks
are allocated for the quality of students’ self-reflective commentary.
An example of how the MSLQ has been integrated into the course: Cognition,
Human Learning and Motivation, offered by Dr Marilla Svinicki at the
University of Texas is available at http://www.utexas.edu/academic/cte/staff/
svinicki/svinicki.html.
Assessing affective aspects

A way to assess how students in an online course feel about learning, the
learning and assessment tasks and themselves as learners, and about the impact of
these feelings on their performance, is to ask students to complete the Zuckerman
Affect Adjective Checklist (AACL).
The AACL (Docking and Thornton, 1979; Zuckerman, 1960) is a self-report
instrument consisting of 21 key adjectives embedded in a total of 60 adjectives
with various affective connotations, arranged in alphabetical order (see
Table 14.1). Respondents select the words that describe how they are feeling
about a particular situation. The AACL takes about two minutes to complete and
is easy to use.
To help students to become more aware of the relationship between their
feelings and learning online, they can be asked to complete the AACL a number
Table 14.1 Sixty adjectives showing the 21 embedded key words on the Zuckerman Affect
Adjective Checklist (AACL)
of times during the course. Students then submit a commentary about their
feelings and how these may have changed, and what impact they had on their
performance. Students share their commentaries in discussion groups online and
discuss strategies for managing feelings. The most frequently mentioned
strategies can be collated and posted as a resource for the whole class.
An example of how the AACL has been integrated into an online course:
Teaching and Learning Online developed by Fox, Herrmann, de la Harpe and
Radloff from Curtin University of Technology is available at http://
www.curtin.edu.au/teaching/.
Assessing cognitive and metacognitive aspects

A way to assess how students are developing as learners, how they go about
learning and their understanding of the learning process, in other words,
cognitive and metacognitive aspects of learning, is to ask students to keep a
learning portfolio or log in which they describe their learning and reflect on their
learning experiences (Alderman et al, 1993; Hartley, 1998; Melograno, 1994).
Students may create such a portfolio electronically and make it available to other
students and/or the instructor to provide commentary and feedback on.
An example of how a learning portfolio has been integrated into online
courses on Natural Resource Management offered by Dick Richardson and
Patricia Richardson at the University of Texas, Austin is available at http://
www.esb. utexas.edu/drnrm/classtopics/general/OLR.htm, accessed 8 July 2002.
An example of the use of learning logs in the course: Information Technology
and Society offered by Dr David Newman at Queen’s University, Belfast, is
available at http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/itsoc/proj/learnlog.html, accessed 8 July
2002.
Table 14.2 Tools for assessing aspects of learning
These examples show how; with some adaptation of existing assessment tasks
and a degree of creative thinking, assessment can be expanded to include a focus
on content as well as on the skill and will involved in learning.
Other assessment tools

There are other assessment tools that can be used to expand the focus of
assessment along the lines already described; some of these are listed in
Table 14.2. For a more in depth discussion of these, see de la Harpe and Radloff
(2000). These tools can be incorporated into online courses as an integral part of
assessment in the context of whatever is being learned using the principles of
effective assessment already described.
A number of these tools are available on the web making their use in
assessment tasks in online courses easy. These include:
• the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) (http://www.geocities.com/gprss_edu/

spq.htm);
• the Learning and Study Strategy Inventory (LASSI) (http://
www.hhpublishing.com/Assmlnst.html);
• examples of Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) (http://www.psu.edu/
celt/CATs.html; http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/catmain.html).
Conclusion and recommendations

In this chapter we have provided an overview of the role that assessment plays in
learning and described key principles of effective assessment. We have presented
a case for expanding assessment to include a focus on motivational, affective
cognitive and metacognitive aspects of learning in addition to content knowledge.
We have offered some examples of ways in which this can be done as part of
regular assessment in online courses to provide feedback to students and teachers
that can inform both learning and teaching practices.
The challenge for course developers is to move beyond the traditional view of
teaching and learning with its emphasis on assessment of content knowledge
when designing assessment for online courses. Moving online provides an
opportunity to apply what we know about effective assessment rather than
simply to replicate outdated assessment practices. Using the principles of
effective assessment and expanding assessment to encompass both content and
process learning outcomes will enhance the quality of learning online to the benefit
of both learners and teachers.
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Chapter 15
The use of online assessment in stimulating
a deeper approach to learning
Carol Johnston
Introduction
Teaching in the higher education sector has moved away from the information
transfer mode of the past towards a student-centred learning focus. A key factor
facilitating this move towards student-centred learning has been the development
of electronic learning technologies that have increased the range of tools now
available to academics in their teaching. There has also been a renewed interest
in how to use assessment effectively to achieve desired learning objectives.
Assessment is a powerful tool in determining the type of learning, skills and
outcomes that we wish our graduates to achieve. Whether we like it or not our
students are driven rather more by grades and assessment than an intrinsic love
of learning. Indeed Boud (1990) finds that assessment more than any other factor
determines whether students will take a deep or surface approach to their studies.
It seems therefore that the harnessing of this powerful motivational tool to
achieve learning outcomes that are important in high quality learning
environments is a productive avenue to explore.
Perceptions of appropriate assessment are related to the objectives that
particular stakeholders have in the higher education environment. Employers
want students to graduate with good communication, teamwork, collaboration,
problem solving, critical thinking, and computer/technology skills. They also
want them to possess the ability to learn independently, to adapt to changing
circumstances, to navigate knowledge resources, to deal with ambiguity and
uncertainty, to engage in self-directed, lifelong learning and to continually
identify gaps in their own knowledge. Academics are likely to see their teaching
objectives in terms of the development of intellectual independence. In times of
budget constraints, university administrator objectives relate to ensuring that
resources are used efficiently and effectively and that changes in teaching
practice including assessment do not result in a rise in costs. Students meanwhile
are concerned about career options and they therefore value assessment that will
assist in the development of skills likely to impress employers. Electronic online
learning technologies offer a range of new strategies to address stakeholder
objectives.
THE USE OF ONLINE ASSESSMENT 207
When assessment is used as a tool in achieving these objectives a number of

issues arise in the higher education context. This context is one where there is a
new recognition of the importance of generic skills, where the expectations of
students are changing and where there is a diverse cultural and socio-economic
mix. Among the issues to be addressed is the provision of rich and timely
feedback on student work, issues associated with plagiarism as well as the
challenge associated with the effective use of new electronic learning
technologies themselves.
This chapter focuses on how assessment and specifically online assessment
can be used to influence the approach to learning that is most likely to achieve
the objectives of the various stakeholders in higher education. Factors to
consider in designing online assessment strategies are discussed and an example
of an online assessment system is described.
Purpose of assessment
There are several reasons for assessing students. First, assessment can provide
students with a valuable form of feedback on their progress in understanding the
subject. This form of assessment is formative in the sense that it contributes to
the formation of knowledge and skills both in the student and in the teacher in
that it can inform future practice. Secondly, assessment is needed in order to
grade students so that they can receive some sort of accreditation for passing the
subject or course at a particular standard. This summative form of assessment
typically takes place at the end of a learning process, often in the form of an
examination, and the results are final. There is little feedback in this instance.
Thirdly, assessment can influence the approaches that students take to their study
and can provide the motivation that leads to the achievement of key learning
outcomes. For assessment to be effective in influencing study behaviour and
providing a source of motivation, Zeidner (1992) argues that it needs to relate to
appropriate study behaviour, to provide extensive coverage of the course, to
occur frequently and be clearly related to the course goals. He also notes that
most students and teachers do not see assessment in this light. They both
consider it primarily as an optimal indicator of student achievement rather than a
means of enhancing motivation or shaping classroom behaviour. This third
purpose of assessment provides the principle focus of this chapter.
Approaches to learning
The influence of assessment on student approaches to and perceptions of learning
is well documented (Entwistle, 1987; Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983; Laurillard,
1984; Ramsden, 1984). Educators over the past two decades have been interested
in using assessment as one avenue through which to stimulate the type of
learning most likely to achieve the objectives of the various stakeholders in
higher education (Entwistle, 1987; Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983; Säljö, 1981;
Watkins, 1982).
This type of learning was first identified by Marton and Säljö (1976) in their
seminal work that distinguished between deep and surface approaches to
learning. Students who use a deep approach are personally involved in the
learning task and seek to obtain some underlying meaning. A deep approach is
where the student attempts to understand and relates new ideas to previous
knowledge, to experience and to conclusions. The student attempts to
comprehend the material rather than replicate it. Such students are likely to read
extensively around a given topic, to discuss the topic and ultimately to achieve
higher grades on assessment tasks than students who use a surface approach
(Biggs, 1987, 1989). These students are independent learners who are in control
of their own learning.
A surface approach to learning on the other hand is where the student has a
reproductive conception of learning. Here the student’s intention is to complete
set tasks and to memorize information; the student does not reflect on the
material to be learnt and focuses on discrete elements without integration.
Students will commit unrelated facts to their short-term memory but are unlikely
to be able to establish meaning or relationships between or within given tasks.
Ramsden (1985) notes that the approaches to learning are not necessarily
mutually exclusive. Students may adopt different approaches according to the
task, the course or the teaching context. In this sense, teachers have a direct and
powerful impact on the learning outcomes of their students. Similarly, a desire to
understand at a deeper level will not, of itself, necessarily give rise to this
outcome as students differ in terms of their cognitive development (Perry, 1970),
their perceptions of the course or task itself (Meyer et al, 1990), previous
experience which they bring to the task (Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983) and their
perceptions of the assessment demands of the subject.
Kember (1991) investigated how students could be encouraged to develop a
deep approach to learning and how teachers could also be encouraged to adopt
instructional strategies that would foster this deep approach. He observed that
there was widespread support for a deep approach by lecturers and teachers and
this was frequently noted as a goal of education. However, the difference
between the espoused goals and the reality was marked in so far as there was
little evidence that the goals were being achieved (Biggs, 1987; Gow and Kember,
1990). Surface level thinking and the transmission of factual knowledge
occupied more time than the fostering of deeper critical level thinking.
Disturbingly, several studies (Biggs, 1987; Gow and Kember, 1990; Johnston et
al, 2000; Norton et al, 2001) have demonstrated that a deeper approach to
learning in higher education actually declines as students move through the
course.
Ramsden (1992, p 67) suggests, ‘the methods we use to assess students are
one of the most critical of all influences on their learning’ (see also for review,
Marton et al, 1984). The amount and type of assessment that students are asked
to undertake will influence their approach to learning. If they are assessed too
much and if the thinking skills that are assessed are of a lower order, students
will respond by adopting a surface approach to learning in preparing for such
assessment tasks. It is appropriate to ask therefore how the curriculum, the
setting and the assessment could be changed to increase the likelihood that
students will adopt a deep approach to study and how electronic learning
technologies can be used to facilitate this.
Assessment to stimulate deep approaches to learning

The assessment of student learning begins with an aligned curriculum and clear
educational objectives (see Figure 15.1). Educational objectives should drive not
only ‘what’ we choose to assess but also ‘how’ we do so. Where questions about
educational objectives and goals are ignored, assessment can become an exercise
in measuring what is easy, rather than a process of improving the achievement of
those elements of the curriculum that we see as important. It follows that it is
important to develop clearly stated subject-learning outcomes for each
assessment task that are drawn from the subject objectives and are shared with
students, so they know what is expected of them.
Learning approaches vary with the tasks set for assessment. Factors that are
seen as fostering a surface approach to learning are unrealistic workloads, over-
assessment, assessment only in the form of an examination, assessment that
assesses only lower order thinking skills, and inappropriate feedback. Feedback
on an individual’s performance is important because it facilitates learning and
should lead to an improvement in performance through increasing motivation.
However, improvements in performance will only be attained if the feedback is
specific, timely, accurate and realistic in terms of what is achievable and is
expressed in such a way that encourages students to reflect on their performance
if necessary (Boud, 1995; Brown and Pendlebury, 1992). Nevertheless, it is
important that students do not rely solely on feedback from academics but evolve
into effective responsible and autonomous learners through the development of
self-assessment (self-evaluation) skills (Baume, 1994). Such skills should help
students to become realistic judges of their own performance and better able to
monitor their own learning and skills development (Boud, 1995).
There are several design strategies in relation to assessment and feedback that
can stimulate deeper approaches to learning. While in the early stages of the
subject it may be tempting to use grades as an incentive, prompt return of
assignments plus consistent standards throughout the process are more likely to
be effective than grade inflation or grade deprivation. Comments on student
work should be brief and well focused, clear, specific, personal and honest.
Electronic learning technologies allow the compilation of a database of typical
comments for each assessment task that can be quickly cut and pasted into a
paragraph for inclusion at the end of the piece. Provision of models of
appropriate responses after the submission date allows students to compare their
Figure 15.1 An aligned curriculum
answers with the model. This is an active form of feedback that requires students
to reflect on their own learning. Publication of student work on the Intranet is
appropriate for the same reason. In addition, it is possible to get students to
comment on other students’ work. Formative computer assisted assessment can
allow students to be automatically directed through feedback to follow up
references and resources. Students find it stressful having several deadlines close
together so it is advisable to timetable assessment so that it is not concentrated in
any particular week. And finally, variety in forms of assessment is desirable.
In short, assessment that is likely to stimulate deep approaches to learning will
be ‘aligned’ with the subject objectives, varied and require active student
participa tion in all learning tasks; there will also be rich and extensive feedback
strategies in place. Electronic learning technologies have an important role to
play in fostering a deep approach to learning and a case where this was used
effectively is discussed in the next section.
Online assessment
In this section, one example of using online assessment to stimulate desired
approaches to learning and key skills is reported. This example was undertaken at
the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce.
Critical and Analytical Learning in Macroeconomics (CALM) was implemented
in the Department of Economics. The subject, Introductory Macroeconomics,
has over 1,200 first-year students. The CALM system aims to encourage positive
attitudes towards macroeconomics, deeper approaches to learning and
confidence in critical thinking skills. The project’s design is based on the
assumption that the achievement of these aims is more likely when students
reflect on their own learning, where the stimulus for learning is real world
problems and issues, and where assessment rewards the ability to analyse,
synthesize and critically evaluate complex material.
In the first week of the semester, all students are enrolled in the Introductory
Macroeconomics tutorial programme. This consists of a ‘face-to-face’
Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) tutorial and a secure online interactive
Web page that allows access only to those members of the same CPS tutorial
(see Johnston et al, 2000 for a discussion and evaluation of CPS tutorials). It is
through this tutorial-based Web page that students interact with the CALM
system and the assessment that they undertake through the semester; see
Figure 15.2.
The CALM system uses an ‘issues-based’ approach to assignment work.
Students are presented with background information relating to a particular event
drawn from contemporary experience. Where possible, the event is something
that has occurred in the very recent past (sometimes in the same week as when
the assignment is made available to students) and is amenable to analysis using
the theoretical tools developed in the lecture and tutorial programme and in the
set text. The aim is to encourage students to see the practical usefulness of their
subject material and to equip them to make more sense of current economic events.
Three macroeconomic issues are posted to an ‘Issues’ page over the course of the
semester; one at week two, one around week five and one at week eight. These
issues are designed to draw on current economic events and in 2000 involved in
the first instance a discussion and application of the criteria used to rank countries’
macroeconomic performance. The second CALM issue related to a
rationalization of an apparent contradiction in two newspaper articles published
on the same day, one reporting on Australia’s high rate of economic growth, the
other reporting on a major slump in Australia’s housing construction industry.
The third issue required an explanation of why the value of the Australian dollar
against the US dollar fell immediately after the release of National Accounts
figures confirming Australia’s high rate of economic growth. Students are asked
to respond to each issue. This requires the student to apply the economic theory
developed in lectures and CPS tutorials to the issue. All responses are
electronically submitted to the CALM ‘Responses’ page.
Students can edit and change their own responses up to the submission date.
After this date, all students in their respective tutorials can view all of the
responses derived from that tutorial. Student identification is removed when
responses appear on the responses page to allow for privacy concerns. The
display of the tutorial members’ responses provides students with useful
feedback on the standard of their own work in relation to others in the tutorial
and also allows them to see the range of possible responses to the same issue.
The next stage in the process is designed to develop reflective and critical
thinking skills in students. Students read the responses posted by their tutorial
group and then select and reserve one response on which to comment critically.
Figure 15.2 CALM system overview
Students are provided with a list of criteria on which to base their comment and a
sample generic critical comment on which to model their work. Following final
submis sion, all responses and comments are available for all CALM tutorial
members to view. This process is repeated for each of the three issues, meaning
that students submit a total of six pieces of work during the semester (three
responses and three comments) at intervals of around two weeks.
At the end of each issue, responses and comments are assessed and results
posted to the students individual CALM page so that students have a record of
how well they are performing. The first issue carries relatively less weight than
the other two in the overall assessment of the subject to allow students to become
familiar with the system.
Feedback to students is provided in a number of forms. Students receive a
mark on their response and comment; are able to view other students work in
their own tutorial; can view model responses and comments provided by the
lecturer; are provided with the online tutor’s overview report at the end of each
issue; and can obtain individual personal comment from the tutor who has
assessed their work. The learner is expected to take an active role in the feedback
process through self-reflection and comparison with others work and the model
responses.
An online tutor is available to all students through CALM. Students can ask
questions at any time and, typically, these are answered within a 24–hour period.
The questions and answers are posted to a CALM bulletin board for all students
to see. This allows all students to have access to the information, not just the
student who posed the question. Questions are identified by topic so that students
can refer to the bulletin board when they are revising for examinations or
completing an assignment. The online tutor can post messages to individual
students as well as to all students enrolled in the subject.
CALM builds on studies which show that an individual student’s achievement
is consistently and positively related to the level of help that the student gives to
others (Palinscar and Brown, 1984; Slavin, 1990). The CALM system provides
the opportunity to interact in a structured way with peers through reading other
students’ work and commenting upon it. This process compels students to
externalize their thoughts and make their ideas explicit. Enhanced understanding
results because students must think about the material and develop and structure
explanations. Other benefits of students interacting directly with their peers
about their learning include improved communication skills, increased individual
self-confidence and new levels of openness to ideas. Strategies for active
learning of this kind have been widely documented (see, for example, Meyer and
Jones, 1993).
The online critique of others’ work allows for physical anonymity, which is a
great equalizer. Shy or reclusive learners have more opportunity to ‘speak’ out
and are sure class members will hear them. Harasim (1990) argues that online
educational interactions, being revisable, archival and retrievable, augment the
users’ control over the substance and process of the interactions. This learner-
centeredness combined with active participation in an interactive collaborative
written environment lays the groundwork for deep learning to occur through
construction, revision and sharing of knowledge.
Importantly, in relation to the approach taken in the CALM project, Levin and
Thurston (1996) report that there is a positive ‘audience effect’ of publishing on
the Intranet for others. Students make a greater effort to produce polished
essays and assignments if these are to be Intranet published. The asynchronous
nature of online interactions allows students time to reflect on a topic before
completing an online task. More generally the advantages of online delivery of
elements of subjects are the increased interaction between students and students
and staff in terms of both the quantity and intensity of the interaction; better
access to group knowledge and support; a more democratic environment where
students respond to content rather than to personalities; convenience of access;
and, for many, increased motivation (Harasim et al, 1997; Laurillard, 1993).
Much has been gained from using the CALM system. Students’ confidence in
their abilities, both computer and Internet related, and in relation to their facility
for critical and analytical thinking, showed significant improvement. Student
attitudes to macroeconomics were more positive and given that the subject is
compulsory, this result is particularly satisfying. The evidence we have is that the
CALM system is an effective way in which to assist students to learn and in

which to foster the skills that are required of graduates (Johnston and Olekalns,
2002).
Conclusion
Provided the technology is stable and reliable, linking assessment to it indicates
to students that this is an integral and important part of their course. The CALM
experience has indicated several key areas that need to be carefully considered
when implementing this type of programme:
1. First and foremost is the issue of security. Students must be confident that their
work is not available to others before the due date and that when it is
submitted online it has been submitted safely and not ‘lost in the ether’.
2. A great deal of student anxiety can be eliminated using sample questions and
modelling answers, or providing examples of excellent previous students’
work.
3. It is necessary to give clear instructions in a variety of formats to ensure that
all students have access to them.
4. Confusion can be reduced where there is a limitation of unnecessary choice
in relation to how to accomplish computer-related tasks. For example, while
there are a number of ways to copy and paste, one simple way should be all
that is included in instructions to students.
5. The key infrastructure issues of bandwidth and server capacity need to be
considered in the design stage.
6. While the large majority of students at the University of Melbourne are
computer literate, 2 to 4 per cent require considerable assistance. This is
relatively easy when student numbers are small but in large subjects (>500
students) this can become a problem. The online assessment system must
cater for all levels of student expertise.
7. Finally, disaster recovery strategies need to be in place at the outset to
address unforeseen events like a server crashing. System breakdowns are
frustrating and can have wide-reaching consequences.
Several advantages of using a system like CALM for online assessment have
been confirmed:
• Feedback can be provided early and is richer than the mere provision of
marks on an individual’s work.
• The student becomes an active participant in obtaining feedback through
reflection on their own work and the work of others.
• Students report that given the greater volume of part-time work they
appreciate the flexibility of being able to submit assessment tasks from home.
• International students report improved communication between students and

between students and staff, and staff report observing a higher quality of work
published on the Intranet.
• Student attitudes to subjects where online assessment has been implemented
have been improved in part because the assessment tasks are framed within
current context and issues.
• There is evidence that confidence in critical thinking is improved.
• Finally, there has been less copying or plagiarism as file sizes, key words and
phrases can be tracked.
The adoption of electronic learning technologies in teaching practice requires

significant reflection in relation to all aspects of subject design and in this sense
provides a number of worthwhile challenges to academic staff. Where staff in the
faculty have taken up the challenge they have found the experience to be cost-
effective in terms of time and effort, after the initial set-up costs, and rewarding
in terms of changes in student attitudes, learning and skill development.
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Chapter 16
Cognitive apprenticeship learning—
ensuring far transfer of knowledge through
computer-based assessment
Ashok Patel, Kinshuk and David Russell
Introduction
Stiggins (1999) recommended fundamental rethinking on assessment as the long
tradition of attempting to incorporate assessment into school improvement
equations have focused almost totally on the use of standardized tests. He found
little emphasis on assessment in the preparation or professional development of
teachers and concurred with several authors (eg, Calfee and Masuda, 1997; Farr
and Griffin, 1973; McMillan, 2001) that teachers and administrators needed to
grasp the assessment concepts, principles, techniques and procedures. Graue
(1993) noted that the teacher-made emulations of standardized tests presented a
barrier in implementing more constructivist instructional approaches and that the
temporal and philosophical distance between assessment and instruction
gradually led to assessment constraining and ultimately narrowing the scope of
instruction— deskilling both the teachers and students. Since the student
performance reported on official documents is a product of assessment, the
assessment strategy strongly influences learning activities and could undermine
the objectives of a teaching and learning system (Patel et al, 1999).
Wiggins (1998) recognized that the nature of assessment influenced what was
learnt and affected the degree of student engagement in the learning process. He
used the term ‘educative assessment’ to describe techniques and issues that
should be considered when designing and using assessments, for instance degree
of engagement and problem-based tasks; nature of feedback and how it was
delivered; forms of assessment and how students prepared for them. He favoured
authentic assessment—with feedback and opportunities for further improvement
rather than a simplistic mechanism to audit learning. The two distinct aspects of
assessment, first as a mechanism of self-testing and learning and second as a
measure of knowledge and skills acquired, are referred to as the formative and
summative aspects of assessment. The former helps the students in their learning
activities by providing opportunities for self-testing and removing
misconceptions. The latter attempts to periodically sum up the skills and
knowledge gained with the purpose of assessing learner performance. The
complete learning experience, therefore, involves frequent loop-backs between
concept acquisition, formative assessment and to a lesser degree, summative

assessment.
Computers can be gainfully harnessed for both types of assessments and
provide a powerful learning environment, especially when the learning is based
around formative assessment supported by immediate and dynamic feedback.
This chapter briefly looks at the traditional and emergent perspectives shaping
assessment and discusses the relationships between concept acquisition,
formative assessment and summative assessment in the design and
implementation of ‘Byzantium’ Intelligent Tutoring Tools (ITT) and the
Intelligent Assessment provided by the accompanying ‘Byzantium Marker’.
These computer-based resources were produced under the Teaching and
Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) of the Higher Education Funding
Councils of the UK and have been independently evaluated at a Scottish
university in a study covering three years (Stoner and Harvey, 1999).
Assessments: theoretical models, types and role in

knowledge acquisition
The traditional perspective of assessment is based on the old theories of
instruction and still exerts dominant influence on current practice. Its key notions
were social efficiency coupled with heredity-based theories of individual
differences and scientific management connected with behaviourist learning
theories. The psychological theories, in turn, employed scientific measurement
of ability and achievement. The social efficiency movement was based on the
belief that scientific methods could solve the problems of industrialized and
urban society and the principles of scientific management, originally intended
for maximizing industrial efficiency, could equally be applied for educational
purpose (Kleibard, 1995). Precise measurement standards ensured that each skill
was mastered at the desired level and scientific measures of ability could be used
to determine who was best suited for different vocational careers.
The behavioural model (eg Gagne, 1965; Hull, 1943; Skinner, 1954) viewed
learning as an accumulation of stimulus-response associations. The underlying
assumptions of this model are:
• learning is the accumulation of atomized bits of knowledge;

• the learning process is tightly sequential and hierarchical;
• knowledge transfer is limited and each objective must be taught explicitly;
• tests should be used frequently to ensure mastery before proceeding to the
next objective;
• tests equate to learning;
• motivation is based on positive reinforcement of many small steps.
The cognitive revolution reintroduced the concept of mind amidst these mechan-
istic theories of learning. Learning is now seen as an active process of mental
COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP LEARNING 219
construction. Cognitive theory also suggested that existing knowledge structures

and beliefs enable or impede new learning; that intelligence involves awareness
about when and how to use skills, and that expertise is acquired in the form of a
systematic and coherent way of thinking and representing problems, not just a
collection of vast amounts of information. This constructivist model requires that
the perception of assessment must change. It should better represent important
thinking and problem solving skills of each domain of learning as well as be
connected to contexts of application. In order for assessment to play a more
useful role in helping students learn, it needs to be moved to the centre of the
learning process.
Knowing what a student is able to do independently and extending the
boundaries of that knowledge with expert guidance, is integral toVygotsky’s
(1978) notion of the ‘zone of proximal development’. Dynamic assessment that
enables feedback and guidance specifically targets gaps in knowledge and
provides scaffolding towards further learning. Genuine understanding is closely
linked to the ability to transfer knowledge and apply it to new situations.
Research studies show that learning is more likely to transfer if students have the
opportunity to practise with a variety of applications (Bransford, 1979).
The preceding discussion can provide valuable insight for successful
harnessing of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into the
curriculum. Norman (1986), while discussing human-computer interaction,
introduced the notions of ‘gulf of execution’ and ‘gulf of evaluation’. We believe
that these notions aptly apply to the learning of any new concept. Initially, the
concept has to be grasped in the context of its utility or application. Any gap in
this understanding represents a gulf of execution as the deficiency curtails
efficient application of the conceptual knowledge. Such a gap may be bridged
through active engagement with drill and practice sessions or simulations. Once
the concept has been understood, it requires deeper reflection, most probably
within a larger context, to truly understand it. Thus situations that present the
concept in different contexts and enable deeper reflection help in bridging the
gulf of evaluation.
The diagram in Figure 16.1 captures these relationships between different
types of learning and different types of assessment (based on Patel et al, 1999).
The upper half represents the know-how aspect of knowledge, indicating
efficient execution of learnt rules and relationships and this type of knowledge is
gained readily from active learning. The lower half represents the know-why
aspect of knowledge, indicating a deeper level of understanding that is obtained
through reflection. A learner initially experiences a shortfall between the
knowledge possessed and that required to execute a given task and this gulf of
execution needs to be bridged through practice employing some form of
formative assessment providing feedback on missing knowledge and
misconceptions. To reduce the cognitive load, the formative assessment initially
needs to be based on identical or very similar representation structures to those
that were used for learning activities. In the next phase, formative assessment
Figure 16.1 Nature of learning and types of assessment
should employ alternative representation structures to enable differential

emphasis on constituents and to provide richer contextual information, with a
view to deepen the understanding of the causal and contextual factors. The
diagram seeks to highlight the fact that formative assessment serves as a vital
continuation to initial learning of new concepts, affording powerful opportunities
for active engagement as well as reflection.
The formative assessment is particularly important from the point of
convincing the learners that they have learnt and now know something. Jensen
(2000) noted that slow, discouraged, or low motivation learners do not usually
possess strong self-convincing strategies and may either self-convince too easily
without adequate knowledge of the subject matter or only self-convince with
much difficulty due to low self-esteem or self-confidence. Adequate formative
assessment opportunities are beneficial to both types of slow learners. Bright
learners, on the other hand, possess more accurate self-convincing skills and
their self-confidence and know-ledge acquisition mutually raise each other to
higher levels. However, lumbering them with excessive amounts of formative
assessments creates boredom. Computer-based formative assessments, with large
data banks or random generating capability, are ideal as they can cater for both
the slow and bright learners to their satisfaction.
Scheduled periodic summative assessments prompt the easy self-convincers to
put in some more formative assessment effort. It should be noted, however, that
with inappropriate summative assessments, there is hardly any inducement to work
through a series of formative assessments covering application and reflection,
thus encouraging deficient learning. The benefit of keeping meta-cognitive skills
in view is that it can increase the effectiveness of learning. Bjork (1994)

observed that in general, compared to distributing practice sessions on a given
task over time, massing practice or study sessions on the to-be-learnt procedures
or information produces better short-term performance or recall of that procedure
or information, but markedly inferior long-term performance or recall.
The following section briefly reviews phases of skill acquisition and how this
knowledge can guide the design of cognitive apprenticeship based tutoring
systems that are built mainly around formative assessment.
Phases of skill acquisition and the cognitive apprenticeship

framework
VanLehn (1996) has discussed a framework for reviewing cognitive skill
acquisition and suggested that Fitts’ well-known categorization of the three
phases of motor skill acquisition (early, intermediate and late) also applies to
cognitive skill acquisition.
In the early phase, dominated by reading, discussing and other general
information acquiring activities, the student is attempting to understand the
domain concepts without yet trying to apply the acquired knowledge. The
primary focus is on studying the expository instructional material.
The intermediate phase begins when the student turns his or her attention to
solving problems. In most cases the attempt is made after observing and
following the solution steps for a few problems that have already been solved.
Though the student may refer back to the expository material, the primary focus
at this stage is on solving problems. At the end of this phase, the student can
solve problems without conceptual errors though he or she may still commit
unintended errors or slips (Norman, 1988). The slips are generally indicative of
the lack of attention arising from the increasing confidence of the student. Such
slips may remain uncorrected as the student may not have adequately developed
a sense of judgement about the overall solution and does not feel that something
isn’t right!
During the late phase, the students improve in accuracy and speed through
practice as the procedures carried out for solving the problem are fully grasped
and internalized.
The three-phase distinction, though an idealization because the boundaries
between the phases are not precise, is nevertheless useful as it indicates that
learning resources for cognitive skill acquisition in any domain may usefully be
categorized into three types. The first category is the expository material that
may contain hyperlinks to facilitate movement between hierarchically,
semantically or laterally connected notions. The second category consists of
formative assessment material with immediate and dynamic feedback at each
step. The immediate feedback ensures that the student’s error is corrected as soon
as it occurs and there is no danger of rehearsing an incorrect conception. The
dynamic nature of feedback ensures that the immediate feedback is provided for
each sub-goal. The student is thus assured of better interactivity with the learning
resource and is freed from the cognitive load of being concerned about a chain of
sub-goals at this stage of learning. The final category is based on summative
assessment to enable free application of knowledge gained by the student,
allowing any slips and errors. A delayed feedback after completion of one or
more summative problems may then be provided for the student to inspect.
A practical application of this categorization can be found in the Byzantium
Intelligent Tutoring Tools (ITT). The first screen in all the ITTs offers a menu
shown in Figure 16.2. The student selects Basic Concepts for expository
material, Interactive Mode for formative assessment and Assignment Mode for
summative assessment. The fourth option, View Marked Work is selected for
inspection of marked assignments and provides feedback on the attempted
solution for each assignment problem.
While the foregoing discussion is based on the phases of cognitive skill
acquisition as idealized distinct categories, the continuum between the early and
intermediate phase is perhaps better captured in the functionality oriented
cognitive apprenticeship framework suggested by Collins et al (1989). The
framework requires that the following functionality should be present in a
tutoring system:
• The students can study task-solving patterns of experts to develop their own
cognitive model of the domain (modelling). The ITTs provide a Basic Concepts
mode presenting textual/graphical explanations and solved examples. The
same material is also available through the Help button in the interactive
learning mode.
• The students can solve tasks on their own by consulting a tutorial component
(coaching). The ITTs offer qualitatively better coaching through interactive
guidance and dynamic feedback while a student is attempting to solve a
problem.
• The tutoring activity of the system is gradually reduced with the student’s
improving performances and problem solving (fading). The ITTs provide help
by exception and the tutoring activity is triggered by an illegal or incorrect
attempt. With the improvement in performance there is less tutoring
intervention.
With well-designed learning resources employing granular interface, it is

possible to learn from simpler interactions. The learning tasks are decomposed into
smaller components at varying levels of granularity with the perspective shift
enabled through the user interface as briefly explained below (for more details
see Patel and Kinshuk, 1997). There is no need for the system to engage in
complex inferencing about user knowledge as the system can provide a simple
correct/ incorrect feedback at a coarser grain size. Where necessary, the system
can advise the student to use a fine-grained interface for more detailed
interaction, as shown under Interactive Messages in Figure 16.3.
Figure 16.2 Byzantium ITT main menu

The figure shows a problem space in the Capital Investment Appraisal ITT.
The proposed investment can be evaluated using one or more of four techniques,
three of which can be selected initially by appropriate pushbuttons on the left-
hand side pane. The student is given some project data to evaluate. In the shown
example, the student is using NPV or the Net Present Value technique and is
attempting the discount factor for end of Year 1. The value of the discount factor
attempted by the student was incorrect so the interactive message advised the use
of Formula feature. The feature employs a fine-grained interface, shown in
Figure 16.4, called up using the Formula pushbutton.
The ITTs have Just-in-time scaffolding and Built-in fading, as demonstrated
by the following attributes:
1. The system does not force a student to use a rigid sequence of data entry or a
particular pathway to the overall solution. The expert model records its own
pathway to the solution; however, the system recognizes all the valid
pathways and alters its guidance in line with the student actions.
2. The system offers scaffolding only when the student demonstrates a need for
it through an erroneous action. This support is based on a branch construct,
either repeatedly informing the students about non-feasibility of their action
Figure 16.3 Net present value screen in the Capital Investment Appraisal ITT
Figure 16.4 Fine-grained Discount Factor pop-up interface
and suggesting an intermediate step as explained in item 3 or offering a

graded feedback as explained in items 4 to 6.
3. If the attempted value cannot be obtained directly from the available
information on the screen, the system suggests that the student first attempts
an intermediate step. However, if the student has performed some
mental operations and attempted a correct value, the system does not insist
that the intermediate step be carried out first.
4. If the attempted value is incorrect at the first attempt, the system merely
notifies that it was incorrect and allows re-examination.
5. On the second incorrect attempt, the system advises the correct relationship
to use. This, the second level of feedback, is the workhorse of intermediate
phase of cognitive skill acquisition as it indicates misconceptions and helps
in getting rid of them with the immediate feedback.
6. On the third incorrect attempt, the system shows the calculation using the
actual data. This level of feedback has been observed only at the initial stage
of the intermediate phase as the student is still grasping the various domain
concepts by placing them in relation to each other.
In the Interactive mode, the student has to initiate some action before the system
offers any guidance. The feedback’s purpose is to spur the students’ own self-
explanations by pointing out the correct action. At any stage of interactive
learning, the students can refer back to the expository material by using the Help
pushbutton. This allows the students to navigate back and forth between the work
they are doing and the textual explanations and solved examples provided in the
expository material. The system requires greater engagement by the students
while giving them greater control over the learning actions. It harnesses the
natural learning capabilities of an intelligent being by giving enough feedback to
prevent an impasse.
The system holds the knowledge of the inter-relationships of the variables and
is capable of generating practice problems. It randomly selects some variables as
independent variables and assigns random values within the programmer-
specified bounds. It then applies its knowledge to derive an expert solution
before presenting the problem to a student. Towards the end of the Intermediate
phase, a teacher may wish to introduce problems in a narrative form for the
student to experience more authentic situations and interpret the data provided in
a free form.
The system provides an ‘enter your own’ problem data option. However, some
variables have a fixed value in the interactive mode to prevent misuse of this
option for solving the assignment problems with interactive guidance. The
problem narration, therefore, needs to be designed around these fixed values. It
still offers ample scope for variation and in return for this handicap, the system
offers a rich scope of summative assessment that can be computer marked. The
Byzantium assessment system is described in Patel et al (1998).
The combination of ITT and Byzantium Marker is capable of identifying and
giving partial score for ‘incorrect interpretation but application of correct
method’, just like a human tutor marking the work. The computerized marking
enables a very fast turnaround. The advantages of frequent summative testing are
three-fold. First, it motivates the students to be more attentive to and put
adequate effort into the interactive learning. Secondly, such increased attention
shortens the intermediate phase of skill acquisition; and finally there is a greater
amount of and more frequent feedback to support the late phase of skill
acquisition. The learning path consists of transition through observation,
interactive learning, simple testing, learning and testing involving multiple
contexts and/or interpretation of text narrative. The ITT architecture also provides
a customization facility for creating appropriate templates by specifying various
parameters. The templates can then be used for the purpose of both the structured
and non-structured problems.
The implementation of cognitive apprenticeship in the Byzantium tutors has
been successful, as demonstrated by the findings of an independent evaluation
briefly discussed in the next section.
Feedback from an independent evaluation

Stoner and Harvey (1999) carried out an independent evaluation at the University
of Glasgow, involving Byzantium and another widely used package called
Understand Management Accounting, distributed by EQL International. Stoner’s
(2002) observations about the two packages were that the latter was a fairly
traditional computer-based learning software that presented core material as text
and graphics, followed by examples. The lessons were interspersed with
questions and tasks requiring student interaction and the formative feedback was
basic but broadly encouraging in nature. In comparison, Byzantium provided
practice in numerical management accounting by generating random variations
on standard example questions and by providing the tools to complete them,
requiring students to work out answers from base data towards solution values,
or vice versa, or in both directions. He found that Byzantium emulated a range of
question types, including incomplete records, typically used to enhance the
understanding of accounting techniques. In addition to the two packages, student
opinions were also obtained on lectures, textbooks, tutorials and workshops.
In their study, involving a three-year comparison of examination performance
and feedback from focus groups, Stoner and Harvey found the results to indicate
that students’ performance had improved significantly over the period since
learning technology materials were introduced and that this improvement
appeared to be mainly reflected in the students’ ability to complete numeric
questions. The student feedback focus groups’ comments, while comparing
Byzantium to the EQL package and to the textbooks, were:
Prefer Byzantium because EQL package waffles on about what you

already know and provides no incentives to pay attention to what it says.
Byzantium offers instant feedback, is more involving and you can do as
many questions as you like.
Byzantium was useful because you could go over bits you were unsure
about. It was better than a book because it was interactive. With the
interactive questions you tend to pay more attention than you would to a
book.
Of the two tutoring systems, 71 per cent of students showed a preference for
Byzantium material while 8 per cent indicated no particular preference. In
relation to Byzantium, 92 per cent of the students liked being able to repeatedly
try random questions, and 84 per cent reported an improvement in confidence in
their ability to perform accounting calculations, and 69 per cent indicated that
they liked to be able to make mistakes in private. The students wanted more
tutoring systems like Byzantium for other topics and were positive about
Computer Aided Learning (CAL) in general, observing that it was good to use
CAL if the tutoring software was good.
The way forward

The cognitive apprenticeship based approach to designing learning software for
introductory accounting has been successfully validated through the Byzantium
ITTs. An important observation in the Stoner and Harvey study was that the
student performance was affected by the quality of integration of the learning
resource in the curriculum. The implementing teacher is therefore a very
important partner in the process. Following Pareto’s rule it may be safe to say
that a well-designed tutoring system is likely, on average, to satisfy 80 per cent
of any teacher’s requirement. However, it is the remaining 20 per cent that most
probably represents the individual idiosyncrasies that differentiate one teacher
from another and therefore likely to be emphasized by the implementing teacher.
One way to encourage wider use of various learning resources is to enable the
implementing teacher to contribute through configuring the learning space,
incrementally adding and restructuring where necessary, the scope and
functionality of various learning components.
The standardized Web browser and communications capability of the Internet
provides a powerful technology to achieve this. While this platform provides a
much better scope for presenting expository material, two other powerful
enhancements possible to the Byzantium ITTs are mentioned below.
Extending the ITT methodology on to the Internet

The success of the stand-alone ITTs has opened the way to create Intelligent
Tutoring Applications (ITAs) over the Web employing the same underlying
model. The Web permits various tutoring modules to be created, held and
accessed in a structured manner across vast distances, provided there are suitable
authoring tools that assist in elicitation or modification of knowledge rules and a
modular software architecture is adopted that not only separates the knowledge
base, expert model, student model and the tutoring module, but also separates the
interface manager from the data about various controls on the interface and their
contents. Such a modular structure enables data-driven software applications and
ensures greater ease in incremental development and modification—in most cases,
just by altering the data about the interface controls. With the appropriate
structuring parameters, the ITAs created or incrementally modified by different
teachers build up to a large inventory of accessible knowledge that can be
utilized by all the teachers in various configurations of single or multiple ITAs to

create hyper-ITS, a flexible intelligent tutoring system.
As an example, consider the Capital Investment Appraisal (CIA) ITT
discussed earlier. It is geared towards learning the application of four different
appraisal techniques with a view to accepting or rejecting an investment
proposal. Since the ITT is coded in Visual C++, it is very difficult to make any
significant modifications and each modification requires the services of a
software engineer. However, when it is converted into a Web-based ITA as
discussed above and authoring tools are made available, different teachers may
harness it in different hyper-ITSs.
One such possible implementation may be for ranking investment proposals in
order of priority by creating a higher-level interface for storing and ranking the
appraisal results and linking it to multiple instances of the CIA ITA. As a further
refinement, a teacher may add modifications to take into account the decision
maker’s attitude to risk. Another possible implementation is to combine the CIA
ITA with an ITA for learning probabilistic outcomes and expected values, so that
uncertainty of future cash flows may be reflected through optimistic, most likely
and pessimistic probable cash flows. A third possible implementation, obviously,
is to link the two implementations above to rank multiple proposals with
probable cash flows. Through incremental modifications made by different
teachers, this approach provides the ability to rapidly and relatively easily build
up a large inventory of different ITAs and their combination into hyper-ITS
systems.
Improving diagnostics through process modelling

Though Byzantium ITTs employ an overlay model and provide feedback by
comparing the student and expert models, they use a very powerful interface
feature in the integrated calculator to enable detailed process modelling. The
calculator allows picking values and dropping results by using the left and right
mouse click respectively. Monitoring user interactions with the integrated
calculator provides the system with a window into the learner’s mental processes.
While improved diagnostics based on process modelling may have limited value
for interactive learning (carried out with immediate and dynamic feedback so there
is no scope for making a series of mistakes), it can offer much better delayed
feedback in case of the computer-marked summative assessments.
Conclusion
Computer-based assessment has come a long way but we are still at an early
threshold of the appearance of serious and substantial applications. Byzantium
ITTs have now been used in real learning environment for more than five years
and at many institutions of higher and further education. What Byzantium has
achieved is exciting and though substantial work will be needed to create the
hyper-ITS infrastructure, the potential demonstrated so far is breathtaking!
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Part 5
Providing feedback
Chapter 17
A feedback model and successful e-learning
Yiping Lou, Helena Dedic and Steven Rosenfield
Introduction
This chapter discusses feedback as part of a model of self-regulating systems in
learning and teaching, and illustrates how elaborate and effective feedback can
be provided in e-learning environments. From the constructivist perspective,
learners construct new knowledge by cognitively elaborating new information
and by reconciling data gained through their own observation and
experimentation, as well as through feedback from teachers, with previously held
views. Similarly, teachers can also be thought of as course designers who
function as self-regulating systems. They construct new task and feedback
structures in a process that involves elaboration and experiments, as well as
reconciliation of previously held views with information they gather from data
provided by learners’ actions and performance.
The word ‘feedback’ is often used loosely. In this chapter, feedback is defined
as an informational message sent by one element of a system to another element,
with the expectation that the receiving element will use this message to modulate
its performance. For example, a heating system in a house consists of
thermostats, a control switch and a heat source. The thermostats compare room
temperature to a predetermined desired temperature, and then send messages to
the switch telling it to either turn the heat source on or off (Doig, 2000). Such a
system can only be functional if: appropriate messages are sent to the switch (the
thermostat is not placed near a draughty window causing incorrect signals to be
sent); messages are correctly interpreted by the switch (a newly installed digital
switch would find messages sent by an old analog thermostat incomprehensible);
the heat source itself is capable of responding effectively to the situation (a weak
heat source in a very large and draughty house will not keep the house warm no
matter how many accurate messages are sent to the switch by the thermostat).
Similarly, when considering the situation in which feedback is to be used to
effectively promote meaningful learning, several conditions must be met:
appropriate corrective messages need to be sent to learners; the messages
themselves need to be interpretable by learners; and learners need to possess
A FEEDBACK MODEL AND SUCCESSFUL E-LEARNING 233
prerequisite prior knowledge, motivation and strategies to respond effectively to

the feedback they receive. In particular, learners depend on the instructional
setting to provide both the tasks from which they can draw data, and the
feedback structures that allow them to gauge their performance (Pintrich et al,
1993). In turn, the teachers who create these same tasks and feedback structures
need feedback from the learners regarding their effectiveness. Thus, effective
teaching depends on teachers being sent appropriate messages; their ability to
interpret those messages; and having appropriate skills to respond to them
effectively.
In this chapter we will first review the feedback literature, concentrating on
feedback design issues such as type, timing and sources of feedback in both face-
to-face and computer-mediated instructional settings. The computer-mediated
instructional settings mentioned in this chapter refer to face-to-face course
designs in which simulations are available to students via the Web and/or in
which students and teachers use computer-mediated communication (CMC)
outside of the classroom. We will then focus on the differences inherent in the
learning environment when shifting from a face-to-face setting to a technology-
enhanced environment, and the impact such differences have on both task and
feedback structures. Illustrations of the nature of such differences as well as
examples of effective task and feedback strategies in such contexts will be drawn
from science classes using Web-based computer simulations and social science
classes using CMC.
Type of feedback and its impact on learning

Research on feedback has accumulated a wealth of information concerning the
impact of feedback upon student learning. Several meta-analyses and narrative
reviews have synthesized this research, and indicated that there is a significant
positive effect on student achievement of providing feedback versus not doing so,
but the effects of elaborate feedback with explanations are generally significantly
larger than simple feedback (Azevedo and Bernard, 1995; Bangert-Drowns et al,
1991).
An essential part of learning in both the sciences and social sciences is the
development by each student of an understanding of the cycle often called
‘the scientific method’ (observations, leading to a belief about some structure
governing a particular phenomenon, testing of that belief through additional
observations, and either formation of new beliefs or further generalization of the
old beliefs). Computer-mediated instruction in science and mathematics
increasingly makes use of simulations, which provide learners with visual
feedback enabling them to travel through this cycle of discovery (Papert, 1980).
In physics, visual feedback without elaboration was found to be less effective
than visual feedback with elaboration (Rieber et al, 1996). These authors speculate
that learners, while interacting with a simulation, might be focusing on successful
234 PROVIDING FEEDBACK
completion of the activity, as opposed to reflecting on the underlying physics

principles.
Timing of feedback
In many reviews and studies ‘timing’ refers to the time interval between the
learner’s response to a stimulus (ie, question) and the feedback provided. The
research focus was often on the comparison between immediate and delayed
feedback, with more positive effects usually found for immediate than delayed
feedback in applied classroom research (Kulik and Kulik, 1988) and computer-
based instruction (Azevedo and Bernard, 1995).
Another aspect of feedback timing that is rarely studied but perhaps is more
important is the provision of feedback during learning activities (Butler
andWinne, 1995). The instructional setting may be such that learners obtain
feedback during the initial stages of the learning process, while they are still
grappling with newly introduced concepts. On the other hand, feedback may be
delivered during a later stage of concept development, when learners are testing
their understanding. Feedback may be most effective if it guides cognitive
activities, during which knowledge is accreted, tuned and restructured
(Rumelhart and Norman, 1978).
Sources of feedback
Feedback sources can be classified as external or internal (Butler and Winne,
1995). Research on feedback has primarily focused on external feedback as
provided by a teacher, either directly or via a computer. This literature overlooks
another possible source of external feedback, from peers. Although small-group
cooperative learning has generally been accepted as an effective learning strategy
(eg, Abrami et al, 1995; Lou et al, 1996; Lou et al, 2001), instructors rarely
integrate formal student-to-student feedback into the instructional design for the
following reasons (Latham, 1997): instructors are unsure that students are
capable of providing effective feedback without proper training; even in
cooperative settings, competitive students may choose not to give quality
feedback to peers; students may possess bias toward peers of different races or
genders; and some students may not appreciate the need for and rewards of peer
feedback.
Internal feedback, on the other hand, is feedback generated by the learner
during his or her own cognitive process of monitoring (Butler andWinne, 1995).
Self-regulating learners monitor their own academic performance, affect and
learning strategies. They rely on their internal feedback to guide appropriate
corrective action if their goals are not being met. They seek external feedback
when they cannot resolve problems on their own. Such students are more likely
to respond to feedback from teachers by taking corrective measures, provided
they can appropriately interpret that feedback. Amongst students who score low
Figure 17.1 A model of effective feedback in e-learning
on self-regulation, however, feedback from a teacher may fail to elicit a

corrective response for a number of reasons, such as improper interpretation of
the feedback or lack of appropriate corrective strategies. A new model of self-
regulation emerges that includes learners’ responses to both internal
(traditionally part of self-regulation literature) and external (traditionally part of
feedback literature) feedback (Butler and Winne, 1995).
A model of effective feedback

We have revised and expanded Butler and Winne’s (1995) model of self-
regulation to create a new model of effective feedback (see Figure 17.1). Our
model views learners as active self-regulators who seek feedback and then
respond to it. Teachers, as course designers, form another self-regulating system
that initiates changes based on feedback gathered from learners’ actions and
performance. Peers who offer constructive criticism form another self-regulating
system that interacts with that of the learner.
In the model, learning/teaching involves simultaneous feedback loops, one
that is centred on the learner and another (completed by the dashed line) that is
centred on the teacher/peer. Solid arrows indicate feedback, while hollow arrows
represent corrective actions in response to feedback. Note that a teacher/peer’s
corrective action is at the same time external feedback from the point of view of
the learner. To portray this duality we use both solid and hollow arrows flowing
from the teacher/peer to the learner. Two important factors that influence
whether feedback provided will help to close the gap between the current state
and goal state of desired performance are: 1) a clear picture of the goal state, and
2) the ability of the learner to carry out the corrective action.
While this model describes both face-to-face and computer-mediated learning,

there are vital differences in the type, timing and sources of feedback used in
these learning settings. For example, in face-to-face classrooms, feedback to
individual learners during the learning process tends to be short and simple due
to time constraints. More elaborate feedback may be provided to the whole class
targeting a mythical ‘average student’. Public feedback aimed at an ‘average
student’ discourages and bores high-ability students while it confuses less adept
ones. However, when elaborate feedback is one-on-one, between teacher and an
individual student, only the student involved in the interaction benefits.
In the computer-mediated environment individual feedback no longer needs to
be private, nor need public feedback be targeted at the ‘average student’. For
example, with discussion boards public feedback provided by the teacher to an
individual student can benefit other students with similar misconceptions. This
knowledge motivates teachers to provide more elaborate feedback, which leads
to higher performance standards in the class.
On the other hand, teaching and learning in the face-to-face settings have the
advantage of synchronous verbal and non-verbal communication. In face-to-face
settings, a good instructor is constantly ‘reading’ the class and modifying
instruction to maintain student involvement. In computer-mediated settings this
type of information is absent and new ways of ‘reading’ involvement must be
used.
Using two very different computer-mediated settings, we will draw lessons
concerning interlocked loops of a learner and a teacher; and then interlocked
loops of a learner and peers.
Feedback and Web-based simulations

Interactive simulations are now frequently used in computer-mediated instruction
in calculus and physics courses. In general, the intention is to allow learners to
rapidly generate many ‘instances’ of a particular phenomenon. Learners are
expected to discover a pattern or rule that explains the phenomenon (hypothesize),
and then to verify their hypothesis by interpreting visual (graphical) feedback.
For example, students may be asked to observe a tangent line as it moves left
to right along a graph of a function. Having observed the animation, students are
then asked to make predictions about the graph of the derivative of the given
function (values of the slopes of the tangent lines). Then, by simply changing an
index value, the simulation adds a dynamic plot of the graph of the derivative
function matching the movement of the tangent line. The resulting graph of the
derivative function then confirms or negates student predictions (http://
sun4.vaniercollege.qc.ca/ calsim). After students have repeated this process with
different functions, each time appropriately interpreting the visual feedback
provided by the simulation, many discover the relationship between a function
and its derivative. If the discovery is made, then students have gained
meaningful understanding of not only this particular relationship, but also of a

more general mathematical thought process.
In face-to-face classrooms the teacher can explain such a relationship, but not
expect students to discover it in this deeper manner. On the other hand, the
teacher obtains feedback from both classroom discussion and non-verbal
messages students send, aiding him or her in assessing how meaningful an
understanding of the concept students have. In response to such feedback the
teacher can modify instruction immediately. In a computer-mediated
environment, where students interact with a computer simulation, the teacher
does not get this same feedback.
Thus, on the surface it appears that the use of simulations, with visual
feedback, enhances student understanding at the expense of feedback for the
teacher. However, the situation is not that simple. The use of simulations to
facilitate learning complex concepts imposes demands on learners that they have
not encountered previously in face-to-face settings. Some students may lack even
basic computer skills that are necessary for learning in a computer-mediated
environment. While the number of such students is rapidly decreasing, any such
students may find that this context hinders rather than facilitates learning. In
addition, many students may have developed a rigid method of monitoring their
own understanding in a subject and thus may not value feedback that is delivered
through the computer interface (Dedic et al, 2001).
Often the ability of students to interpret complex visual (graphical) messages
is limited. In our work we found two ways of helping students to make sense of
such feedback: deliver visual messages in stages, with initial messages being
visually simple and gradually adding layers of complexity; and augment visual
feedback with elaborative textual feedback (Alalouf et al, 2002). Adding
elaborative textual feedback to visual feedback improves student learning.
However, how such feedback is delivered changes how students use simulations.
We tried elaborative feedback as text placed immediately after simulations.
Unfortunately, given such easy access to textual explanations, most students
decided to forgo experimentation altogether and instead just read the text to learn
what they could have, and ideally should have, discovered visually through the
simulations.
Those annoying ‘pop-up’ advertisements seen on all too many Web pages
suggested another possible mechanism for delivering elaborative feedback.
While students were working with simulations, questions were made to pop-up
on their screens, an impromptu quiz if you will. Student responses were
evaluated and verbal feedback provided by the computer. Pop-up feedback
screens can be triggered in a number of ways: length of time the student has spent
on the simulation page; tied to a particular activity on the simulation page; or
under student control, as a button. Our experiments with the timer indicate a
number of shortcomings to this method: some students move frequently between
the simulation page and other textual materials, thus continually restarting the
timer, and hence either never see the pop-up or experience it repeatedly; some
students move through a simulation page so rapidly that they never experience
the pop-up; some students work so slowly that the pop-up arrives prematurely
for them (Alalouf et al, 2002). Our experimental results show that high achievers
decode complex visual feedback, requiring only that the complexity be layered,
while low achievers require the layering of complexity as well as elaborative
textual feedback. Furthermore, we found that student achievement, when using
all of these techniques simultaneously, is superior to student achievement in a
traditional face-to-face instructional setting (Dedic and Rosenfield, 2002).
Another difficulty with visual feedback is that students need to translate visual
information into appropriate mathematical vocabulary. Pop-up quiz questions
that modelled such translation proved to be particularly helpful in aiding students
to formulate an appropriate mental model of the concept they were
experimenting with. We have also found that it is important to structure
simulations and their use so that underlying patterns are more likely to be
visible. For example, if the objective of a simulation is to discover that there is a
linear relationship between two variables, then the independent variable should
only be allowed to vary in an organized fashion. Thus, in a simulation of a
spring-mass system, if the student is to discover how the period of oscillation
depends on the mass, the simulation should allow only integral multiples of an
original mass.
Providing feedback to teachers is a problem in computer-mediated
environments for two reasons: the teacher does not obtain such information
directly from students, and modifications to the environment require preparation
time, resulting in a delay in teachers’ responses to any feedback that is obtained.
We found that both students’ answers to pop-up quizzes and access to log files of
student activity can generate the feedback that teachers need; however both of
these means for obtaining feedback must be built into the environment (eg
Winne, 1989). In fact our research demonstrates that students’ answers on pop-
up quizzes correlate with achievement after the activity, thus feedback in the
form of answers to pop-up quizzes allow us to predict how students are
developing conceptual understanding. Further, access to log files allows teachers
to trace students’ activities during use of simulations. While teachers routinely
assess student motivation, metacognition and/ or prior knowledge in face-to-face
settings, further research will be required to determine whether teachers can draw
analogous feedback from log file data.
The section above discussed, in a science class setting, the changes wrought
on both the learner and the teacher feedback loops by the use of interactive
simulations. In the section below, we discuss a social science class setting, where
discussion plays a larger role in the course and CMC offers new possibilities to
learner, teacher and peer feedback loops.
Feedback and Web-based discussion boards

CMC tools such as Web-based discussion boards are increasingly being used in
distance education courses or as a supplement to traditional face-to-face
classroom teaching and learning, especially in social science courses. One
common usage of a discussion board is to enable group or class discussions on
topics and issues related to the course. The asynchronous communication
provides students with opportunities to reflect and respond to each other
thoughtfully. A considerable amount of research has shown that learners can
benefit from these discussions through cognitive elaboration and sharing of
different perspectives, prior experiences and distributed cognition when learners
are actively engaged (see the chapter by Sims in this book for a more detailed
discussion).
Another effective use of a discussion board is for teachers to provide public
and elaborate feedback to either an individual student, or the whole class, so as to
benefit more students. For example, in class or group discussions, the instructor
can monitor the discussion and provide feedback when misconceptions arise. In
our social science classes, we also used discussion boards to provide detailed
feedback on each individual or group project and to encourage all students to
read each others’ work as well as the instructor’s feedback as a way of not only
learning from each other but also developing a better perception of the desired
learning goals.
A less often used method of providing feedback, using CMC, is structured
feedback between and among students working on different projects. Few studies
have been conducted to document how such peer feedback can be structured
successfully due to the concern that learners are unable to provide each other
with quality feedback (Latham, 1997). In the examples below, we describe two
courses, one graduate course in instructional design and one undergraduate
course in educational technology integration, where peer feedback was
successfully designed and implemented using group space on Blackboard
(2000), an online course builder.
Most of the participants in the graduate course were in-service teachers.
During the course, students worked in small groups on a semester-long
instructional design project. Initially, each group used their own online group
space to post project work and to exchange ideas amongst the group members, in
addition to the face-to-face class meetings. To encourage cross-group
collaborative learning, group areas were open and accessible to all members of
the class, and students could ask questions and make suggestions to any group
that they visited. The students generally found this cross-group collaboration
helpful. However, as the semester progressed and the amount of interaction
increased, most students found it hard to follow all other projects online. To
alleviate this problem, while continuing to encourage collaborative learning, each
group was assigned a specific group that they were to follow and provide
feedback to. Student course evaluation data, as well as comments in students’

journals, indicated that they liked the more focused approach.
Most of the students in the undergraduate course were pre-service teachers.
During the course students worked on a number of short projects to learn to
use various technology tools and to design technology-enhanced lesson activities
for their current or future students. A few strategies were used to provide
guidance, modelling and scaffolding so as to effectively implement peer
feedback in this class. One strategy employed was for the instructor to provide
detailed individualized feedback for each project online during the early part of
the course. The instructor’s feedback served students as a model of how to
provide constructive feedback.
A second guidance strategy used was the provision of an evaluation rubric.
The rubric was given to the students before the start of their projects. They first
used it as a guideline in developing their own work, and later used it as a
checklist when evaluating other students’ work. This strategy was found to be
effective for short and less complex projects.
Another guidance strategy was developed and implemented for complex
design projects. The students would first evaluate some outside resources as a
group and then the whole class shared group responses and developed a common
understanding of the characteristics of good work. The results of the class
discussion were then compiled into an evaluation rubric, both as a guideline for
project development and as a tool for evaluating the work of other students.
As indicated in the midterm and end of course evaluations, students responded
very positively to peer feedback. With percentages ranging between 71 and 93,
the students liked the peer feedback experience; felt that their projects improved
as a result of the feedback they received; thought that evaluating work of other
groups or students provided them with multiple perspectives as to how projects
could be done; and stated that by helping them to see the strengths and
limitations of other students’ work, their own work had improved.
The findings in the two courses indicate that, if appropriate structures and
guidance are provided, peer feedback during project-based learning can be
beneficial to both the provider and the receiver of the feedback. Peer feedback
places students in the position of providing feedback, not just receiving it. This
promotes student meta-cognitive and critical thinking skills, and helps students to
develop multiple perspectives, thereby increasing achievement motivation and
improving self-regulation in learning.
Conclusion
At the core of this chapter lies our model of feedback that involves interlocked
feedback loops, portraying learners and teachers/peers as actors who provide and
receive feedback. The model is based on constructivist learning theory and self-
regulated learning. It emphasizes the importance of gathering learners’ process
and performance data and providing feedback during the learning activities so
that learners will be guided effectively toward achieving their desired learning
goals.
Our findings on feedback in science and social science classes indicate that e-
learning settings offer the opportunity to enhance feedback during the learning
process so that student learning outcomes and affect are improved. However, it is
important to note that effective feedback structures are not automatically a
part of interactive simulations, CMC or other e-learning settings, and that
teachers must actively design them in and recursively continue to refine them
through experimentation.
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Chapter 18
Interactivity and feedback as determinants
of engagement and meaning in e-learning
environments
Rod Sims
Introduction
This chapter examines the ways in which feedback plays a critical role within e-
learning environments in terms of participant engagement and the construction
of meaning. It emphasizes that the effectiveness of communication between
course participants largely depends on the dynamics between learner, computer,
other humans, information resources and/or learning objects—all of which
contribute to the interactive and collaborative experience. Within this computer-
mediated context therefore, the participant’s interactivity is critical to success,
and the means by which feedback is conceptualized, structured and activated by
each player within the e-learning environment is the foundation for that
interactivity, enabling communication and subsequent engagement.
Whether students are on campus and using online resources and
communication, or remote and totally dependent on computer-mediation for
access to other participants and content material, e-learning environments are
prolific. However, implementing e-learning environments without embracing the
necessary educational rationale and good practice is problematic (Brennan et al,
2001; Sims, 2001 a). Similarly, anecdotal data from my own teaching
environment suggest that teachers are confronting different and complex
workloads and that students are not necessarily equipped with the skills and
competencies to take advantage of e-learning features. While providing the
potential for collaborative communities, e-learning environments continue to
require significant effort to achieve their educational potential.
The first section of this chapter highlights the importance of feedback and
agreed understandings of its role in educational and e-learning processes. The
second section focuses on strategies for both teachers and learners to enhance
their e-learning experience by constructing feedback that is consistent with
current understandings of the learner-computer interface, encapsulated by the
term ‘interactivity’. These strategies are contextualized by examining options for
maximizing the effectiveness of feedback within the range of interactive
encounters afforded through e-learning and explained within a classification of
specific features for feedback within online environments. Selected illustrations
of these environments are presented, focusing on the common asynchronous

threaded discussions enabled by popular learning management systems. Through
this analysis, feedback is constructed as a major factor contributing to individual
learning as well as the overall success of e-learning applications.
The importance of feedback

A critical aspect of e-learning is the extent to which participants gain value from
communication and collaborative activities, the two-way process between
participants and/or content items. If neither the teacher nor the learner receives
appropriate feedback relevant to their contribution, the generation of meaning
and engagement within that environment will be diminished. This applies both to
contributions made by other persons and from the content associated with
discrete learning objects.
As illustrated in Figure 18.1, a participant within an e-learning network is
making both proactive or self-initiated requests and reactive responses. The solid
lines represent the communication and feedback links between the participant
and the environment, while the dotted lines highlight other interactions taking
place within the e-learning community. Unless appropriate and timely feedback
is provided within that environment, the learning activity may be impeded,
resulting in compromised communication and diminished meaning being derived
from the exchange (Sims, 2001b).
The importance of feedback to all computer-based learning environments is
widely acknowledged: ‘Feedback should be positive. It should avoid negative
statements, sarcasm, and should never demean the learner. Feedback should be
corrective. It should provide the learner with information to improve future
performance’ (Alessi and Trollip, 2001, p 115).
But feedback can be more than positive and corrective. Laurillard (1993, p 61)
argues forcibly that ‘action without feedback is completely unproductive for a
learner…feedback has to be meaningful’ andWlodkowski (1999, p 244) states
that ‘feedback is information that learners receive about the quality of their
work… (it) is probably the most powerful process that teachers and other
learners can regularly use to affect a learner’s performance’. Feedback must
therefore be value-added, enhancing not just confirming an action. Laurillard
(1993) differentiates these as intrinsic, where feedback is a natural consequence
of an action, and extrinsic, where feedback is an external comment to a situation,
with information embedded within the feedback leading to correction and
adaptation of performance.
How then does this relate to the egalitarian world of e-learning, where all
learners and teachers can be conceived as equal participants in the learning
process? Palloff and Pratt (1999, p 123) conclude that ‘an important element that
should be built into an online course is the expectation that students will provide
constructive and extensive feedback to each other’ but caution that ‘the ability to
give meaningful feedback, which helps others think about the work they have
DETERMINANTS OF ENGAGEMENT AND MEANING 245
Figure 18.1 Participant view of e-learning environment
produced, is not a naturally acquired skill’. When working in an e-learning

environment, participants interact and receive feedback both intrinsically, from
operation of the computer equipment and information displayed on the interface,
and extrinsically, from the information embedded within resources accessed and
communications received. While it is essential to know that operations have been
successfully completed (intrinsic feedback), the critical element is the meaning
that is derived from extrinsic feedback directly related to the learning outcomes.
Using feedback successfully not only involves constructing a response but also
ensuring that all participants are enabled with the competencies to interpret
ongoing feedback consistent with the characteristics of the learning environment
(enabled through the interface) and the anticipated communication process
(described by the learning strategy).
Communication
Feedback therefore is the essence of all educational communication, and will
define the quality of the overall interaction. By focusing on communication, a
more comprehensive understanding of the interactive dynamic will emerge and
assist in the creation of prescriptions and guidelines for e-learning. One
particular facet of understanding communication is the various influences that
affect the construction of meaning:
Meanings are not to be found or understood exclusively in terms of acts of

communication, but are produced within specific cultural contexts.
Moreover, communication can be understood as the practice of producing

meanings. Communication practices refer to the ways in which systems of
meaning are negotiated by participants in a culture and culture can be
understood as the totality of communication practices and systems of
meaning. (Schirato and Yell, 1996, p 1)
The importance for e-learning is therefore to emphasize the recipients and the
meanings they will place on information received, which in turn are based on
their particular cultural, gendered and social background and experiences.
Equally important is to recognize that e-learning communities are likely to
establish their own set of meanings and culture, impacting on the way in which
the content is understood. This is significant, as different cohorts of participants
may interpret learning activities in different ways. Consequently we must
continue to explore ways in which individual learners can gain value by applying
their own meanings and interpretations to the exchanges. Re-emphasizing the
learners in the overall process, and how they might wish to deal with and
interpret the content, remains a critical component in coming to understand
better the value that can be obtained from creating educational environments
where learners interact and communicate through computers.
Participants as actors
One means by which learners can gain more recognition in the broad educational
environment is to cast them in specific roles, such as information gatherer,
consolidator or peer assessor, which addresses the potential of e-learning
environments to embrace the concepts of actors, theatres and narrative (Laurel,
1991). This option is supported by more recent studies, which have found that
where narrative is evident a better learning experience was provided (Plowman,
1996) and that without a context or narrative, the overall understanding of the
learning environ ment can be compromised (Sims, 2001b). For e-learning
specifically, the actor analogy has been expressed in terms of tones and voices
(Collison et al, 2000). The reconstruction of the participant’s role in e-learning is
therefore a critical factor in making it work effectively, and casting the
participant as actor may enhance the way feedback is presented and interpreted
(Hedberg and Sims, 2001; Sims, 1999).
If the interactions are constructed and modelled as a play, what role will the
learner take—one of audience or actor—and if the latter, what form of actor:
improviser, performer or understudy? How these roles are selected and
understood will both affect and determine the quality of the dialogue and
therefore influence the value of feedback to the participants.
Maximizing the benefits of feedback

Based on the importance and interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic feedback, the
link between communication and meaning as well as the role participants might
take, the following discussion follows two interrelated threads. The first
addresses interactions within e-learning environments and the second presents a
set of strategies by which engagement and meaning will result from interactions
within e-learning environments. It is only by understanding the relationship
between interactivity across an e-learning environment and its impact on
effective feedback that the full benefits of collaborative learning will be realized.
E-learning and interactivity

The value of interactivity comes from the extent to which participants in the
learning process are able to manipulate the learning environment to meet their
own particular needs (Aldrich et al, 1998; Sims, 2000). Although these studies
focused on computer-mediated learning with content resources, the outcomes
have a direct impact on e-learning through four discrete elements of interaction
and the associated role that feedback plays in supporting communication to
enhance engagement and meaning. These elements are derived from the work of
Wagner (1994), Anderson and Garrison (1998) and Sims et al (2001), who
articulated and elaborated the learner: interface, learner: content, learner: teacher
and learner: learner interactions. For this discussion, to reinforce the
collaborative nature of e-learning, the teacher and learner roles have been
collapsed to that of participant, although clearly there are specific and unique
roles for the teacher and the learner within the broad range of e-learning, as
represented in the interactions shown in Figure 18.2.
Participant: interface
Any e-learning context requires participants to access and interpret the visual
presentation of content, implement the actions necessary to navigate through
that content and complete transactions integral to the learning process. The
participant must also be able to interpret the communication framework
presented by the system and establish an appropriate mental model of that
environment in order to play the role necessary to achieve their goals. As
described by Hedberg and Sims (2001), ensuring participants have the
competencies to work with the interface, and that the interface itself can adapt to
their level of ability, is an essential aspect of successful negotiation of the
interface, and the ways in which this intrinsic feedback is presented to the
participant will impact that negotiation.
Figure 18.2 Elements of interactivity with e-learning environments
Participant: content
A second element of interaction is that between participant and content.
Although the discourse surrounding e-learning often focuses on collaborative
exchanges and community, it must also include the ways in which participants
interact with digitally-available content. This is becoming even more critical with
the growing focus on reusable content, learning objects, metadata, intellectual
property and copyright, as it affects the means by which participants can access
and add to that content base (Sims et al, 2001). Content relating to learning
outcomes may be prescribed through course requirements, generated by
participants or accessed from external sources. Engaging with and deriving
meaning from that content can only be secured through participants utilizing
communication and feedback mechanisms. It is therefore imperative to ensure
that the design and dynamics of the feedback do not interfere with the ability of
the participants to work with the content.
For example, many content, interface and feedback elements include sounds
and animations, which are integrated by designers for aesthetic or interactive
reasons, but which may distract from and interfere with the learning process
(Sims, 2001b). Content that is provided by the teacher or sourced by the learner
should be screened to minimize the chance of interface elements detracting from
its contribution to the learning process by masking or disrupting the feedback
process.
Figure 18.3 Sequence of proactive and reactive communication and feedback
Participant: participant
Finally, the most critical interaction is that between the course participants. Any
communication between learners and/or teachers implies feedback is active, and
meaningful interactions will depend on the ways in which that feedback is
presented and understood (Schirato and Yell, 1996). While individual
participants may establish socially-oriented communication, where the
interactions are related to learning, the management of the feedback will
determine the success of the educational programme. Issues such as availability,
dynamics and timelines will also impact on the success of communication
between teacher and learner. While the teacher may act as an equal participant,
when necessary his or her role is to provide an informed view of the content domain
through both proactive and reactive feedback processes. A typical sequence of
participant: participant interaction is shown in Figure 18.3.
Where the interactions are embodied within an accredited course of study, it is
critical that learners are also fully aware of the administrative expectations and
assessment commitments. In the establishment of relationships between
participants, the concept of encounters—the ways in which people meet, interact
and communicate within e-learning environments—can be useful, enabling
strategies to be implemented that ensure all participants have the skills,
experience and confidence to work within that environment (Hedberg and Sims,
2001; Sims, 2001b).
Interactive agents
A new form of what might be termed ‘covert’ interactivity is also emerging,
whereby the system and/or course participants can enable intelligent agents
(special software applications) to support the learning environment:
We see a telelearning system as a society of agents, to use Marvin

Minski’s term, some of them providing information and explanations,
others constructing new information, still others fostering collaboration
between agents or providing assistance to the other agents on content,
pedagogical process or organization of activities. (Gilbert-Paquette et al,
2000, p 6)
These agents support the learner: learner, teacher: teacher and content: content
interactions as illustrated in Figure 18.2, and their essential characteristics can be
described as:
• Learner agents: supporting research, communications and project

management. For example, an agent could be enabled to remind the learner of
assessment completion times and to notify them of new Websites with a
specific focus on their field of study.
• Teacher agents: supporting searching and communicating, automating routine
tasks and research. For example, an agent might inform teachers that all
assessment items had been submitted or alert them to recent research
outcomes.
• Content agents: supporting search, retrieval and automatic updates;
negotiation and monitoring of other interactions. For example, a content agent
might maintain the currency of resource materials for a class of study.
Importantly, these agents are able to operate whether or not course participants
are online. In this way the feedback takes the form of the content generated by
those agents and the meaning for participants will be a function of the accuracy
with which those agents perform their tasks and identify materials directly
related to the domain of study. The value of these agents will be realized through
the extent to which they have appropriate expertise and intelligence to source
relevant and reliable material.
Feedback strategies to enhance e-learning

Within the context of these interactive dynamics, the following discussion
identifies a set of characteristics of and strategies for feedback that are designed
to promote engagement by participants. Within the face-to-face context, the
instructor or teacher often plays a dominant role in facilitating and responding to
discussion, assessment and activities. With e-learning however, all participants
can be empowered and therefore each has to understand the process and value of
feedback. Using characteristics of effective feedback as a framework (see
Wlodkowski, 1999, pp 245– 49), the following strategies elaborate techniques by
which feedback can enhance meaning and engagement.
Communities of inquiry
Analysing feedback within e-learning is not only a case of deconstructing the
different forms it can take but also ensuring a common understanding of the roles
and expectations within the community of learners. Unless there is an agreed set
of roles in terms of contributions and format, the feedback, which is ongoing for
the duration of the course, will have potentially less meaning. Similarly, the way
in which the environment is enabled will also impact on how feedback is viewed
and used to construct meaning. Anderson and Garrison (2002) presented three
elements for this community of inquiry:
1. Cognitive presence: the extent to which the participants in any particular

configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning
through sustained communication, using strategies such as exploration and
integration.
2. Social presence: the ability of learners to project themselves socially and
emotionally in a community of inquiry, using affective, interactive and
cohesive behaviours.
3. Teacher presence: the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and
social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and
educationally worthwhile learning outcomes that can be viewed in terms of
the interaction between instructional design, facilitation of discourse and
direct instruction.
To illustrate the ways in which some of these dynamics are manifested within e-
learning, I will reflect briefly on two scenarios and the impact the facilitation role
can take in determining the format and value of the interactions and feedback
dynamic.
In the first scenario, learners are presented with a discussion question from the
facilitator: ‘What is the importance of a Learning Plan?’ and the resulting
discussion follows a format where individual learners respond to the question
and those responses are augmented by feedback from the facilitator. More rarely
other students offer reflections to the postings of their colleagues.
While the success of communication between participants in this environment
is dependent on their level of motivation, it can also be influenced by the way in
which the interface enables discussion and interaction to evolve.
In the second scenario, learners are presented with this activity: ‘There is
considerable debate on the format of Learning Plans. Compare the two plans
provided in the Resource Area and identify what you consider are the benefits of
each. Compare your findings with those of other participants and develop a
group-summary of the critical elements of a Learning Plan’. In this instance, the
activity is focused on achieving a goal rather than finding an answer and demands
interactivity between the participants as well as from the facilitator. While the
content discipline and learning outcomes can impact on the way such
interactions are generated, e-learning is predicated on collaboration and
communication and therefore participant: participant interactivity must be
established to maximize its benefits.
While the different scenarios will result in different forms of feedback and
activity by the participant, their purpose is to illustrate the importance of
establishing a community of inquiry where collaboration and contribution become
the responsibility of each participant. Once the different elements of presence are
established, the ongoing contribution by participants will be manifested through
feedback and to maintain its effectiveness will require integration of many of the
following attributes.
Informative and meaningful

Providing feedback must do more than simply acknowledge the submission: the
learner values feedback that relates directly to his or her efforts and the extent to
which it is on- or off-task. For example, making a posting that challenges or
questions a particular concept requires more feedback than ‘Thank you, Rod’.
This becomes even more important when dealing with learners and teachers who
are considered peers—the feedback needs to both respond as well as augment the
original argument.
A more appropriate response might be ‘Rod, you have taken Mary’s concept of
instructional design and added an interesting dimension of influence. How would
you relate that to the traditional ADDIE model?’ Not only does the feedback
acknowledge and praise, but also sets an additional goal for the learner to pursue.
This example highlights an increasing requirement for contributors of feedback
to understand the environment and develop the necessary skills to create a
valuable learning space for all participants.
Granular
Feedback also needs to be provided in manageable chunks. In many threaded
discussions, all prompts and participant responses can be displayed to enable
quick access; however, after a semester’s work, the number of responses can be
in the thousands. While individual elements of the thread may be appropriately
sized, being able to recall a specific response or to identify an appropriate place
in the thread to make a new response can be problematic with such high volume.
To address this potential limitation, the participants can negotiate the ways in
which threads will be titled and responses classified—in other words establish
operational standards for that specific set of interactions. Similarly, responses

should be relatively concise, with longer elaborations assigned to attachments.
Timely
Being prompt with feedback does not necessarily mean immediate, as there are
many instances when a delay in feedback can provide better rewards than
incremental conformation (Alessi and Trollip, 2001). For the e-learning
environment, it is the timeliness of feedback that is as important as its
promptness:
Many learners report that turnaround time is one of the most important
aspects of good feedback. In an open and distance-learning environment,
email is a major means of communication. Learners often become anxious
when they do not receive a quick response to their concern. The demand for
a response can impose an unrealistic burden on the faculty member,
especially if it involves reviewing a course paper or project. One simple
solution that seems to work well is to send an email indicating that the
message or product has been received and a date or time when the learner
can expect to hear back from you. Many messages can be responded to on
the spot. It is also important to provide meaningful comments. Learners
have reported that short, terse comments such as ‘good job’, ‘nicely done’
or ‘this is an A paper’ with no further elaboration often reflect negatively
on the faculty member as learners often perceive this response as
meaningless and tend to feel the member may not even have read the paper
or project. (Rossman, 2002)
The implementation of timely feedback is determined by the design strategies

that underpin the learning environment and activities, and the extent to which
participants within the programme are familiar with the expectations and protocols
of the communication. Certainly within higher education, the critical element is
for learners to be informed of the standards for the provision of feedback and the
form it is expected to take.
Within discussion groups, individual learners can see immediately that their
post has been accepted and the number of responses (feedback) subsequently
made to their post. However, rather than responding to each posting, a standard
could be set whereby the facilitator (or one of the participants) undertakes to
provide a summary of issues raised. How often feedback is provided should
therefore be the result of negotiation between course participants. Alternatively,
agreement could be reached that the facilitator will respond to postings within 24
hours. While the number of participants and their respective workloads will
impact on the negoti ation, options such as peer-group assessment and feedback
will alleviate the demands on the facilitator to respond to each and every posting.
Individual
One of the important dynamics emerging from implementations of online
learning is the need for participants to be acknowledged as individuals, and
strategies to address this are common in distance education literature. Within e-
learning interactions, developing this shared understanding of roles will enhance
individual submissions and assist the establishment of a community based on
feedback that is differentiated across participants. This can best be achieved if
the person making the feedback has a good knowledge of the person they are
responding to and can therefore personalize the exchange. Where numbers of
participants are large, it may not be possible for one facilitator to respond to
individual contributions. Nevertheless, basic strategies can be implemented to
assist this process, such as asking participants what feedback they prefer,
establishing their readiness for feedback and ensuring that it has been received
and understood.
Another means to individualize the communication and feedback process is to
assign roles to participants so they undertake tasks specific to that role. This can
be achieved using established forms of activity such as the case study or enabling
students to take on a ‘virtual persona’ whereby they can act out within the
learning environment. How this is achieved will depend on the existing
community of participants, their familiarity with the e-learning context and the
nature of the field of study.
Making it work
These feedback strategies provide insights to enhancing e-learning collaborative
environments. However, despite the collaborative nature of the medium, learners
are working independently and require models by which to compare their work
and construct their own understanding.
Figure 18.4 demonstrates one means by which the environment could be
presented to the participant such that all responses to a specific topic are
available for viewing in multiple windows and that, if appropriate, the
participant could then use these responses to construct further meaning for their
own context.
Conclusion
Within this chapter the value of feedback to e-learning environments has been
addressed in relation to the essential aspects of communication and interactivity.
The ways in which individual participants derive meaning from communication,
and subsequently engage with the course content, is dependent on the quality of
the feedback created during that interactive process. However, despite
the proliferation of online learning systems, questions continue to be directed
Figure 18.4 Individual participants extract meaning from community
towards the effectiveness of e-learning, especially where it is driven by content

rather than communication.
Based on this analysis, it is the way in which e-learning is implemented that is
critical, demanding communication, the two-way process where participants,
people and resources act upon and have an effect on each other. However, this
can only be achieved where feedback is used to provide those individual
participants with the means to maintain an ongoing dialogue with their fellow
participants. And it is the way this is facilitated that is critical:
Remember that sometimes the best form of feedback is simply to

encourage learners to move forward to the next, more challenging learning
opportunity. Too much comment by instructors tends to emphasize our
power and can diminish our role as co-learners. (Wlodkowski, 1999, p
249)
It is through this process that engagement and meaning will be generated, and the
challenge is to enable participants to achieve interactive balance (Sims, 2001b),
whereby all actions and inputs are consistent with their mental model, preventing
or minimizing any interference with the feedback process.
We know much about sound educational practice, and the provision of
feedback is one of the critical elements within that practice. Applying this
understanding to the unique environment afforded by e-learning will ensure its
ultimate success. What makes good feedback is adherence to accepted principles
and ensuring all course participants have a common understanding of the
protocols for their learning environment. Equally important is the maintenance
of respect for the unique contribution of each and every participant.
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Chapter 19
Fundamentals for structuring feedback in
an online learning environment
Christopher K Morgan
Introduction
It is well accepted that active learners benefit from being aware of their learning
progress and look to their instructors for feedback. This chapter investigates how
the technologies associated with e-learning can be used to leverage the provision
of this feedback. In doing so it will examine how such leveraging of feedback
might influence student persistence.
In order to structure feedback for optimum gain within an online learning
environment, we must first understand what it is about feedback that provides
value for the student. Once this is understood, the focus then becomes one of
identifying whether there is anything special about the tools of e-learning that, if
used astutely, can add further educational value.
Much has been investigated on why some students drop out of courses. Much
less has been written about why other students do not drop out. As lack of
adequate feedback can be a contributor to student attrition, then one could well
presume that the provision of adequate feedback contributes to student retention.
But is this too simplistic? The value of feedback lies in its impact on the learner.
The instructor needs to think through the development or change that is intended
in the learner as a result of providing feedback. How can the tools of an e-
learning environment be used to help secure improvements in the learning
process?
Learner responses to feedback can vary. It is generally understood that as one
progresses through a programme of study the depth of that study will increase
and the learning expectations will be of a higher order. Yet despite these rising
demands, some students manage to achieve improved grades as they progress
through their programme. Why is this so? Could such students have
progressively developed their academic skills and learnt how to become more
effective learners? If so, how have they achieved this? It is the contention of this
chapter that feedback is the key to such a learning improvement and that
feedback can be facilitated through astute use of an e-learning environment.
In order to address the issue of using e-learning feedback to improve student
persistence, this chapter will initially look briefly at the role of feedback in the
FUNDAMENTALS FOR STRUCTURING FEEDBACK 259
learning process and at how this role may relate to student persistence. It will
then examine the implications for instructors seeking to capitalize on this while
operating in an e-learning environment.
Educational role and impact of feedback

In reflecting on the early work of Lewin (1951), Kolb (1984) conceived the
learning process as a four-stage cycle, which is:
facilitated best by an integrated process that begins with here-and-now

experience followed by collection of data and observations about that
experience. The data are then analysed and the conclusions of this analysis
are fed back to the actors in the experience for their use in the modification
of their behaviour and choice of new experiences. (p 21)
This process is illustrated in Figure 19.1.

The important role of feedback is the aspect of Kolb’s learning model that is
of particular relevance here. The observations and reflections that form the
feedback can be derived internally by learners or be communicated to them from
external sources. While the internal generation of feedback by learners is
important, the concern of this chapter is the feedback provided by the instructor
and others as part of the teaching function. The medium for this external
provision of feedback to students can be an e-learning environment.
Inadequate feedback processes, Lewin (1951) argues, are likely to result in an
imbalance between observation and action, resulting in ineffective learning.
Students not achieving learning successes can become demotivated and are more
at risk of dropping out (see, for example, Gibson and Graff, 1992). There is a
large array of factors that can lead to student attrition (Kember, 1995) and only
some of these are within the influence of instructors. Various writers such as
Woodley and Partlett (1983) and Garland (1993) have contributed to
categorizing these barriers to participation in four categories of persistence:
1. Situational—arise from a student’s particular life circumstances, such as

changed employment situation, changed marital status or having a baby.
2. Institutional—difficulties students experience with the institution, such as
admission requirements, course pacing and limited support services.
3. Dispositional—personal problems that impact on the students’ persistence
behaviour, such as their attitudes, confidence, learning styles and motivation.
4. Epistemological—impediments caused by discipline content or else the
relative perceived difficulty of that content.
A study by Morgan and Tam (1999) revealed that it was common for non-
persisting students to encounter many such barriers. Instructors who lift learner
morale and motivate through their feedback have a dispositional influence.
Figure 19.1 Kolb’s learning cycle
Similarly, when constructive interaction occurs through feedback it may have an

epistemological influence as the student’s correct performance is reinforced (or
else reoccurrence of incorrect performance is avoided due to the instructional
feedback provided when errors are made).
The motivating effect of positive feedback should not be underestimated.
There is considerable evidence (for instance in studies reported by Schunk,
1989) to support the contention that superior academic achievement occurs as
students develop confidence in their own capabilities. By receiving encouraging
information about their progress and learning achievements, the learners build
their efficacy beliefs as they succeed and progress. Similarly Tuckman (1999)
has reported on a sequence of experiments that confirm a link between obtaining
regular performance feedback and the outcome of improved academic success.
There is no less a need for such interaction and feedback in the online
environment than in any other. Irrespective of the medium, the processes of
interaction and feedback add value that results in improving quality and success.
It has been claimed that superior outcomes can be achieved in the online
environment. For instance, in writing about asynchronous online interactions and
feedback, Garrison (1997) enthused about the disciplined and rigorous form of
thinking and communicating that is prompted by means of the reflective and
explicit nature of the written word. It is this opportunity for reflection that is seen
as a factor in students making connections between ideas and constructing their
own knowledge.
Implications for instructors

The e-learning environment is one where otherwise disconnected students can
interact with each other, and with their tutor, on an ongoing basis throughout
their programme of study. Other strategies, such as weekend or other residential
schools and audio and video conferencing, provide only limited opportunities for
distance education students to interact in this manner, as they are not available on
a continuing basis. Students able to capitalize on the enhanced scope for
interactivity through e-learning can gain a sense of community rarely
experienced outside the on-campus situation.
There will be qualitative differences between the value to students of real-time
verbal feedback in a traditional on-campus tutorial and the asynchronous written
interactions of computer conferencing. The reflective and precise nature of the
latter is profoundly different from the spontaneous and less structured nature of
oral discourse in the former. Similarly the ephemeral nature of oral
communication is to its disadvantage while the ability of a written record to be
stored and revisited adds further to its value to the learner.
Some fundamentals
Unfortunately many students are reluctant contributors to discussion irrespective
of the medium of instruction being employed, and this has implications for the
amount and quality of interaction that will occur. In the e-learning environment,
posting a message either to their instructor or to their class can be a major step for
such students. Instructors generally recognize this and commonly employ an
introductory strategy that facilitates each student posting an item on the class
electronic bulletin board. While this may serve to familiarize otherwise reluctant
or unskilled students with the technology, unless their contribution is positively
acknowledged, it is not likely to ease any self-doubts or to build motivation. This
suggests that it may be important for messages posted by students to receive a
quick and sensitive response.
The question remains, however, as to the feasibility of providing students with
the ideal of some positive acknowledgement of all their electronic
contributions. It may be quite unreasonable to expect the instructor to take full
responsibility for this. An option may be for the instructor to arrange for the
sharing of this responsibility around the student group for acknowledging that
each posting has at least been read and noted.
In the face-to-face situation people usually know straightaway whether or not
they have been heard. This may be through eye contact or other non-verbal
forms such as a smile, nod or shake of the head, and that may be sufficient
reassurance. In the online environment, no such feedback subtleties exist and
acknowledgement has to be direct and obvious.
Students need to be thought of as fragile and sensitive participants. There can
be many factors that contribute to someone’s lack of willingness to participate.
Reluctance may be due to a fear of being seen as stupid or inadequate, and this may
be the reason why some people ‘lurk’. While self-doubt can be a factor, so too
may be a lack of keyboarding skills or perhaps a time-consuming approach in
which they hand write a message before typing it rather than directly entering it
onscreen. Some individuals will have a preference for oral over written
communication, have a busy life that allows them little time to participate in the
online community, perceive little value for them in participation, or any
combination of such factors.
Clearly it takes some skill to provide feedback that is sensitive as well as being
honest and constructive. In the online environment, where students have never
seen their fellow students or their instructor, there may be individuals whose lack
of confidence means they are especially tentative in their ventures into a
somewhat public forum. Their particular sensitivities may make it difficult for
them to deal with feedback given to them, even though it may not be negative.
Of course, there can be those at the opposite extreme who readily engage with
others online and who may so overdo their contributions that they dominate a
forum.
Any response to a message a student posts should help and encourage further
participation. Therefore the tone and style of responses are important, and
consideration might be given to establishing some rules for all conferencing
participants either at the outset or by way of intervention as necessary. The rules
could address not only what is to be posted but also the language and tone of
interactions. Clearly a personable response rather than a carefully crafted academic
but cold one is more likely to contribute to the building of a welcoming
community of learners. Palloff and Pratt (1999) press the point that achieving
successful online facilitation requires the development of an electronic
personality that is recognized as honest, responsive, relevant, respectful, open
and empowering.
In any learning interaction there are rules of engagement. While a tutor is
likely to encourage students to express themselves, sensitivity and respect for the
views and feelings of others are expected. The tutor may point out to all that
feedback should be constructive rather than destructive, and while responses will
be expressed according to the style of the speaker’s personality and may at times
be provocative, they are nevertheless not to be offensive and are expected to
conform with community standards.
One feature of the online environment is that the creator of the message has
the advantage of being able to reflect prior to hitting the send button. This
opportunity for reflection before communicating can reduce the likelihood of
offensive behaviour occurring and probably makes it even less tolerable when it
does. When someone goes outside the acceptable boundaries, then those in the
learning community should be prepared to say so. The tutor may need to
intervene and spell out some boundaries and limitations.
Automatic, personal, or both?

Feedback is timely when it is provided at an appropriate point in the learning
process to highlight students’ weaknesses and give guidance on corrective
actions. It also enables students to evaluate and monitor their own progress. The
timeliness of feedback responses is crucial to the learner. Clearly, if the notion is
accepted that, as shown in Figure 19.1, a role of feedback in learning is to inform

future actions, there is considerably less value for learners if feedback arrives too
late for them to use. For instance, feedback on a way of thinking would likely be
seen as having less value if received after a related assessment item had been
submitted than if it had been received beforehand.
Few would question the students’ preference for immediate and personal
feedback by their tutor. With larger groups, however, this might be logistically
difficult. Dewar and Whittington (2000) believe it is not feasible to acknowledge
every comment made by online students. To overcome this, perhaps feedback
could be structured so that responses are automatically generated by the
technology in use. This can provide advantages such as giving feedback rapidly
even when there are large numbers of students, and when the instructor is not
available for example at weekends, evenings or at holiday times.
Some advocate the use of databases for this purpose and see their ongoing
improvement as learning resource items are progressively added. When good
quality student work is received it can, with the author’s permission, be added to
the database and made available for reference by future students. Taylor (2001)
describes how this can be done:
(Computer Mediated Communication) provides a rich source of thoughtful

interactions, which can be structured, tagged and stored in a database and
subsequently exploited for tuition purposes on a recurring basis through the
application of automated response systems. It is this judicious use of
automated response systems, which has the potential to transform the cost-
effectiveness of distance education and thereby to meet the growing
demand for access to lifelong learning. (p 5)
The successful conversion of such vision into effective realities would have
particular attractions, such as improved institutional responsiveness. It is
envisaged that this use of technology could accomplish the ideal of providing a
level of affordable, round-the-clock, instant response. This has obvious appeal
where individual students may be working independently in different time zones
and at different times of the day or night.
The University of Southern Queensland in Australia has developed prototypes
of ‘intelligent object databases’, which can be searched by pre-specified key
words. When an electronic query from a student is received, the search engine
seeks an appropriate match with a previously asked question. If successful, a
response to the current question is triggered. During these early days, the
response generated by the system is monitored to check for its appropriateness as
a personal response to the student. The goal is to reach a level of development
and sophistication at which the system can function without the necessity for
human intervention. If that can be achieved, then this system of feedback will be
able to provide immediate pedagogical advice to students at any time and at
minimal variable cost.
While Taylor (2001) talks of personalized responses, others such as Ryan

(2000) fear that responses will cease to be personalized. If effective feedback is
personal and individual, then can de-personalized computer responses be truly
effective? Ryan talks of how students pore over written responses and comments
on their work and the degree to which they value engagement with their
instructor whether it is by very personal assignment feedback or through other
direct interactions. She sees the linking of automated feedback systems with
student assessment as downgrading the teaching/learning process. She equates
this to the employment of Skinnerian ‘teaching machines’, with the result that
surface rather than deep learning is achieved.
Nevertheless, it should be recognized that automated feedback is potentially
effective as it is based on individual responses to progressive operator decisions.
Computerized multiple-choice tests used formatively can be marked
automatically and feedback provided instantly. If they are Web-based, for example
packages such as PsyCAL (Psychology Computer Assisted Learning), then they
may be accessed at any time from any place, whether that be on or off campus,
and completed at the student’s preferred pace. Once the answers have been
submitted the program immediately marks them and generates a feedback page,
which refers students to sections in the recommended texts that should be
revised. In a study reported by Buchanan (1998, p 73) it was found that the great
majority of students were using the program as intended and were purposefully
investigating the references to which they were directed. Only a small minority
opted for a less pedagogically sound approach and used it as a Skinnerian
teaching machine with the consequent achievement of surface learning.
The advantages of this automated feedback approach in formative assessment
easily explain its growing popularity and it is not difficult to find other examples
of applications. For instance Velan and Kumar (2000) enthuse about their use of
proprietary software to furnish their medical students with online formative self-
assessments. They point out that feedback is not only instant to students but it
also provides academic staff with information about conceptual difficulties
encountered by students in particular areas of the course.
Scepticism towards using technology to generate automatic feedback arises
from the fear that it may trivialize content knowledge and undermine the
attainment of higher order learning outcomes. It is unlikely that supporters of any
recognized learning theory could find comfort were this to occur. While
assessment approaches such as true/false questions, multiple-choice questions,
matching exercises, and ‘fill in the blank space’ activities may be readily used to
provide instant feedback in an e-learning context, they are also prone to be used
to obtain regurgitation of received rather than constructed knowledge via low level
memorization of facts rather than higher order learning. Those assessment tools
seen as most readily adaptable to the provision of automated feedback are less
likely to be able to develop, first, conceptual understanding, and second, the
ability to apply, evaluate, explain and make new meaning connections.
Additionally, it should not be presumed that instant feedback is optimal.

Merrill et al (1992) found that when students are dealing with a complex
problem, human tutors tend to regulate the timing of their feedback rather than
provide immediate feedback at every step. They weigh the relative importance of
the error before providing feedback. Research by Farquhar and Regian (1994) on
intelligent simulation revealed some contexts where delayed feedback resulted in
improved learning outcomes. It may be that instant automated feedback does not
allow time for internal reflection by learners as they construct knowledge.
While there are clear advantages associated with automated feedback, it has to
be recognized that there are reservations associated with having complete
reliance on it. Consider, for instance, an organization with an educational goal of
building a mutually supportive learning community to achieve better educational
outcomes, including improved student completion rates. Such an organization
would be unlikely to rely completely on automated student feedback.
Consequently successful virtual campuses, such as the University of Phoenix, De
Vry and the Duke Global MBA systems, opt for low student-to-staff ratios to
enable their staff to give personal attention to their online students.
Educators in the e-learning environment need to consider whether a mix of
feedback strategies should be employed. Each approach can provide different
values, and any particular deficiencies of one approach may be offset by the
contributions of the other approaches. For example, where classes are large or
where there are frequent student submissions there may be value in combining
automated feedback with peer feedback to give timely, manageable and
personalized feedback to students.
The issues that revolve around utilizing students to provide their peers with
personalized feedback in an online environment are fundamentally the same as in
any other learning situation. These include the need for instructors to monitor the
peer evaluations and to be alerted to students who may be doing poorly and who
need intervention.
While the issues may be the same, in an e-learning situation the technology
enhances the opportunity to resolve them. Henderson et al (1997) cite one such
instance in which a database was employed to generate information about peer
feedback for monitoring purposes. Here students were expected to link their
answers to a selection of exercises to the class Web site that was available for
viewing by all other students in the class as well as the instructor. Students were
required to comment on a certain number of submissions by other students and to
give them a score. Different tools were then used to facilitate the instructor’s
need to resolve issues of validity and reliability such as detecting large variations
in scores on an exercise and detecting exercises with unusually low or high scores.
This process was seen to have the potential to improve the collaborative work
skills of students as well as contribute to higher levels of understanding.
Leveraging feedback benefits through e-learning

A choice of e-learning feedback approaches is emerging for instructors to utilize
as they seek to improve educational outcomes; the following is a short selection.
Distributing selected exemplars

Electronic receipt by course instructors of student work lends itself to storage
and ready retrieval of selected pieces of work. This can be a rich educational
resource to use with other students through the feedback process. If a student’s
submission lacks depth or some other component, an appropriate example from
the electronic store can be retrieved and sent to the student for guidance. Such
examples can provide the necessary scaffolding for other students to follow.
Instructors employing this strategy will need to develop mechanisms for
obtaining permission from the authors for their items to be placed in the
electronic store and to be used in this way for teaching (a simple electronic pro
forma seeking approval should suffice). Additionally, depending on the extent of
the collection and the breadth of purpose, instructors will likely need to organize
their electronic collection in such a way that they can access the items efficiently
for this feedback strategy.
Web-based forms
Web-based forms have been found to be valuable for assessment purposes. These
can also be used as diagnostic tools that instructors can employ to alert
themselves to the need to intervene and provide timely feedback. The following
is an example of one such interchange between instructor and student:
‘good job identifying the primary differences (between Piaget

andVygotsky). Your response is right on target. Should this be an exam
question, you might want to elaborate a bit on each difference (eg, give an
example of each of these differences related to a teaching strategy). Thank
you for taking advantage of this opportunity’. The Web-based assessment
form creates an iterative process to learning and growing in that the
student is then able to provide a new response for further feedback. ‘Thanks
for the feedback. You suggested that I may need examples of the
differences ofVygotsky-vs-Piaget, and I’d like to run some by you to see if
I am applying the theory correctly.’ (Hazari and Schnorr, 1999, p 34)
Peer feedback as assessment components

One common view is that students need to be given very good reasons to
participate in optional activities associated with their courses. Therefore to ask
students to give feedback to their peers in an e-learning situation is courting
disappointment unless there is some inducement associated with it. One strategy
to secure participation is to structure the assessment process in such a way that
students will be rewarded for providing quality feedback to their peers. Kinross
and Morgan (2001) report on such a situation in which students were asked to
respond to set online activities and provide feedback on the postings of their
peers. They suggest the following criteria for instructors to use when assessing
peer feedback for the online environment:
• commitment to undertaking the activities in a professional manner;

• evidence of a supportive, positive and inquiring attitude to others’ comments,
whatever their level of experience and expertise;
• adherence to timelines as set;
• engagement with the content in a full and focused manner.
Students can be asked to engage with and comment upon a wide range of activity
types. These include issues for debate relevant to the course being studied,
challenge exercises and problems to be solved, readings for critique, reviews of
linked Web sites, and tasks such as the development of individual student
learning contracts. With the latter, students can be allocated to small learning
groups and be required to give feedback to their peers as they develop their
learning contract for their individual project with the instructor. Matters they can
help define and refine include the scope and goals of the project, methodology
and timelines, and assessment criteria and weightings. These processes may not
be feasible for particular student cohorts other than in the e-learning context.
Conclusions
Some may consider providing feedback in the e-learning environment as being
unacceptably time-consuming and burdensome. This is most likely to be the case
if the approach is to use technology merely as a vehicle to replicate conventional
interactions between instructors and students. However, those prepared to review
their teaching paradigm may discover that technology offers new opportunities to
facilitate the achievement of learning goals. Palloffand Pratt (1999, p 20) put this
saliently:
The development of community as part of the learning process helps to

create a learning experience that is empowering and rich. It is essential to
impart the importance of this process to faculty in order to maximize the
use of the electronic medium in education. Without it, we are simply
recreating our tried and true educational model and calling it innovative,
without fully exploring the potential this medium holds.
The e-learning environment provides instructors with the opportunity to achieve

high level learning impact through their astute use of feedback to their students.
The tools are sufficiently broad to enable a bewildering array of strategies to be

employed to fulfil a spectrum of teaching and learning visions. Learner-centred
approaches can involve automated formative assessment systems to provide
rapid feedback to help students monitor and evaluate their progress. Other
approaches can be more personalized and involve peer as well as instructor
feedback. The potential benefits for the teaching/learning process of e-learning
feedback strategies are being progressively identified. As further discovery,
development and refinement occur, those potential benefits will increasingly be
realized.
It was Woodley (1987) who made use of the analogy of cost/benefit analysis
when describing students as undergoing a continuous evaluation of their
experience by weighing up the negatives and positives involved in continuing
with a course. By improving the student’s experience by leveraging the provision
of feedback through the tools of e-learning, instructors can affect dispositional
and epistemological factors associated with student persistence. This influence
can be expected to help tip the balance towards the positive side of the student’s
experience and result in improved retention rates.
References
Buchanan, T (1998) Using the World Wide Web for formative assessment, Journal of
Educational Technology Systems, 27 (1), pp 71–79
Dewar, T and Whittington, D (2000) Teaching online: a new skill set, in Working
Knowledge: Productive learning at work, ed C Symes, pp 113–18, University of
Technology, Sydney
Farquhar, J and Regian, J (1994) The type and timing of feedback within an intelligent
console-operations tutor, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors
and Ergonomics Society, 38, pp 1225–31
Garland, M (1993) Student perceptions of the situational, institutional, dispositional and
epistemological barriers to persistence, Distance Education, 14 (2), pp 181–98
Garrison, R (1997) Computer conferencing: the post-industrial age of distance education,
Open Learning, 12 (2), pp 3–11
Gibson, C and Graff, A (1992) Impacts of adults’ preferred learning styles and perception
of barriers on completion of external baccalaureate degree programs, Journal of
Distance Education, 7 (1), pp 39–51
Hazari, S and Schnorr, D (1999) Leveraging student feedback to improve teaching in
Web-based courses, THE Journal (Technological Horizons in Education), 26 (11), p
30
Henderson, T, Rada, R and Chen, C (1997) Quality management of student-student
evaluations, Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17 (3), pp 199– 215
Kember, D (1995) Open Learning Courses for Adults: A model of student progress,
Educational Technology Publications, Hillsdale NJ
Kinross, C and Morgan, C (2001) Improving interactivity online for land management
distance education students. Paper presented at Ninth Cambridge International
Conference on Open and Distance Learning, Cambridge
Kolb, D (1984) Experiential Learning, Prentice Hall, New Jersey

Lewin, K (1951) Field Theory in Social Sciences, Harper and Row, New York
Merrill, D, Reiser, B, Ranney, M and Trafton, J (1992) Effective tutoring techniques: a
comparison of human tutors and intelligent tutoring systems, The Journal of the
Learning Sciences, 2 (3), 277–305
Morgan, C and Tam, M (1999) Unravelling the complexities of distance education
student attrition, Distance Education, 20 (1), pp 96–108
Palloff, R and Pratt, K (1999) Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, Jossey-
Bass, San Francisco CA
Ryan, Y (2000) Assessment in online learning. Paper presented at the 2000 National
Teaching Forum of Australian Universities Teaching Committee, Canberra, Australia
Schunk, D (1989) Self-efficacy and cognitive skill learning, in Research on Motivation in
Education, eds C Ames and R Ames, pp 13–44, Academic Press, San Diego CA
Taylor, J (2001) Fifth Generation Distance Education, Higher Education Series (Rep No
40), Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Canberra
Tuckman, B (1999) A tripartite model of motivation for achievement: attitude, drive,
strategy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association, August, Boston, MA
Velan, G and Kumar, R (2000) Effectiveness of online assessments as well as criterion-
referenced and project-based summative assessments. Paper presented at the 2000
National Teaching Forum of Australian Universities Teaching Committee, Canberra
Woodley, A (1987) Understanding adult student dropout, in Open Learning for Adults,
eds M Thorpe and D Gudgeon, Longman, Harlow, Essex
Woodley, A and Partlett, M (1983) Student drop-out, Teaching at a Distance, 24, pp 2–23
Commentary On learning and teaching with
technology: principles and practices
Andrew Higgins
The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for leveraging the
learning and teaching experience is becoming endemic among the educational
community. In an ideal world, educators and researchers would examine the
impact of new developments in teaching and learning with a view to
communicating how the innovation might impact educational decision making,
both at the teacher and the systemic levels. Learning and teaching do not occur in
an artificial environment but within the parameters of society at large.
Consequently, teachers adopt innovations without always being able to
understand their full learning and teaching implications for them and their
students. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because if no one adopted an
innovation in practice, there might be nothing to evaluate and little knowledge
gained.
This book contains a number of working examples of how ICT is being used
to ‘leverage’ learning and teaching processes. It adds more data for researchers to
use in their evaluation of the effectiveness of these technologies. Rapid evolution
in technologies offers students and teachers an array of challenges that are being
met in schools and tertiary institutions in the western world. It has been
suggested that the ‘higher education community has a lot to learn regarding how,
and in what ways, technology can enhance the teaching and learning process,
particularly at a distance’ (Phipps et al, 1999, p 29).
This book demonstrates how a number of academics and teachers have used
ICT to enhance learning, teaching and the assessment of learning outcomes for
students. Research needs to be carried out to establish the impact of ICT,
including its impacts and implications for learning tasks, learner characteristics,
student motivation and teachers’ skills and attitudes. The activities reported in
this book clearly indicate that learning and teaching issues are foremost in the
academics’ minds when they implement these technologies. To that extent, this
book helps to lift understanding learning and teaching more generally.
Coming through the book very strongly is the central role played by the human
factor in education. There are examples here of a shift in the roles of teachers
from being the ‘sage on the stage’ to the ‘guide on the side’ when fostering
independent student learning. Designing student’s learning experience involves
not only the teacher, but also the learning process, design expert, technology
COMMENTARY 271
expert, resource management specialists and perhaps project managers. Nowhere

does the book suggest that using technology to leverage learning and teaching is
a cheap option, or a threat to the teacher. If anything, the contributions in the
book suggest that the role of the teacher, although changed, is in fact
significantly enhanced.
ICT and distance learning specialists claim that access to learning off-campus
is enhanced by the use of computers. Questions need to be asked if the ‘quality’
of the computer-mediated learning experiences leads to similar outcomes on and
off-campus. Implications for this are issues related to access to bandwidth,
technical support, affordability of hardware and ability to upgrade software
systems.
That technology is having a major impact on the public in general and on
students in particular is not in question. Technology is having and will continue
to have a deep impact on learning and teaching almost everywhere. Teachers
using technology to enhance the flexibility of their work are turning to what was
the Cinderella of the academic community: distance learning. However, as this
book demonstrates, teachers using information technologies have gone beyond
the ‘correspondence’ version of distance education and moved it to a completely
new level. The transition to a new kind of learning and teaching brings with it
issues needing to be addressed in novel ways; for example, as access to learning
increases, the characteristics of the student population change. As a result,
teachers find it appropriate to consider various ways of addressing the
circumstances in which students find themselves.
The last decade of the 20th century saw a sea-change in the language and
practice of education. Lifelong learning skills and criterion-referenced
performance-based student learning outcomes now drive curriculum statements
in ways never before imagined, even though the terms are not welcomed by
many who teach. Simultaneously, the growing use of ICT provides an
opportunity for both curriculum and teaching strategies to be revisited. The
philosophy underpinning these changes is also more evident. Concepts such as
activity-based learning, teachers as facilitators of learning and collaborative
learning are central to the learning and teaching processes. This book
demonstrates how some of these principles and processes are translated into
practice with the use of ICT.
A feature of these new learning environments is the ease with which students
access knowledge and data sources from around the world. Libraries are renamed
‘Information Service Centres’, partly because they now rely less on books but
also because they provide access to electronic information that would otherwise
be inaccessible to most. Students, as co-constructors of learning, can make better-
informed choices about the validity and reliability of the data they use to learn. The
resultant implications of using these sources for intellectual property rights and
for copyright law resonate through legal circles.
Receiving responses on the work they do substantially enhances students’
learning. Teachers find providing feedback one of their most onerous yet
rewarding tasks. The electronic environment provides pathways for students to

communicate with each other and with teachers in ways not before envisaged.
Sections of this book concerning opportunities for socialization and feedback
demonstrate that ICT is capable of providing a very high level and quality of
support.
So, what does this book have to say about the teaching and learning
transaction? First, it recognizes that subject matter-based teaching is the core of
most higher education academic work. It finds that carefully created models
designed to engage students in interactive learning are integral to the use of
information and communications technologies.
Second, the book reminds readers that although academics aim to produce
student-centred and interactive learning, this is sometimes daunting for students
because it requires them to manage complex information in open-ended learning
environments necessitating additional support strategies to enable them to cope
with this challenge.
Third, the book draws on respected educational practitioners to show that
students learn a great deal from each other and that students can use computer
mediated communication to support one another in their construction of
knowledge.
Fourth, the book recognizes that traditional methods of assessment do not
readily translate to an online learning environment. This dissonance provides an
opportunity to develop criterion-referenced, motivational, affective and cognitive
assessment strategies.
Fifth, the authors show that feedback given to students enhances their learning
and that workload, type of feedback and form of feedback need to be carefully
considered to maximize its impacts.
In summary, this is a book full of carefully collected experiences of
practitioners that stand to add significantly to our understanding of technology-
enhanced teaching and learning practices.
Reference
Phipps, R, Merisotis, J and O’Brien, C (April 1999) What’s the difference? A review of
contemporary research on the effectiveness of distance learning in higher education,
IHEP. Accessed 5 July 2002 from http://www.ihep.com/Pubs/PDF/Difference.pdf
Index
Page references in italics indicate figures or tables.

AACL (Affect Adjective Checklist) 200, role in learning 195
200 and student approaches to learning 207
acculturation 122, 129 tools and tasks 196, 198, 201, 264
active learning 2, 76, 94 value of computer based 190
affective aspects of learning 198, 199, 200, VSM project 100, 101
201 see also feedback
affective channel capacity theory 137 asynchronous online communication 126,
affective immediacy indicators 139, 141, 135, 147, 260
141, 143, 144, 144 authentic assessment 183, 183, 217
affordances of ‘everyday things’ 84 authenticity 66
agency, concept of 128 of context 38, 66
agents, intelligent 249 of medical triggers 81
aligned curriculum 208, 209 of multimedia objects 53
animations 59 and problem-based learning 78
assessment 4, 181, 181, 205, 216 social work education 112
and cognitive skill acquisition 221 VSM project 93
and content knowledge 194, 197 automatic feedback 263
and deep approaches to learning 208,
210 behavioural learning model 218
dynamic 47, 218 BioBLAST (*) program 38, 40, 41, 43, 45
expanding focus of 197 Bloom’s taxonomy 182
future of online 191 Byzantium ITTs see Intelligent Tutoring
models, types and role 181, 187, 217 Tools
in multimedia environments 92
online examples 184, 187, 187, 210, CALM (Critical and Analytical Learning in
211 Macroeconomics) 210, 211
online systems advantages 214 causal loop diagrams 16
online systems areas for consideration CFT (Cognitive Flexibility Theory) 12
213 change, implicit theory of 26
and peer feedback 266 CLEs see Constructivist Learning
perceptions of appropriate 206 Environments
principles of effective 195 CMC (computer-mediated
PrOCALL project 124 communication) 153, 262
purpose of 206 cross-cultural 129
273
274 INDEX
and feedback 237, 238 see also simulations

hyperpersonalness of 136 computer-mediated communication see
negotiation of meaning 126, 127, 131 CMC
and power and identity 130, 131 constructivism 154, 166, 232
and social presence 136, 137 and assessment 218
socialization through 153 and QuILT program 65
coaching 50, 173, 221 Constructivist Learning Environments
cognition 25, 66 (CLEs) 155, 161, 169, 169
and learner development 198, 199, 200, content 1, 2, 24, 25
201 domain knowledge representation 49
situated 66 modelling and simulation and 11
cognitive apprenticeship 12, 50, 66 participant and content interaction 247
and Byzantium ITTs 221, 226 simulations and science education 37
and the InterSim system 56 see also resources
and multimedia objects 51, 51 content knowledge 194, 196, 197
Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) 12 context
cognitive guideposts 39 of assessment 184
and BioBLAST (*) program 42, 45 authenticity of 38
cognitive skills and multimedia object selection 53
acquisition 220 courseware 25
and multimedia 50, 51 see also resources
cognitive theory 219 Critical and Analytical Learning in
cohesive immediacy indicators 139, 141, Macroeconomics (CALM) 210, 211
145, 145, 146 critical thinking 211
collaboration 12, 17, 18, 155, 181 cross-cultural linguistic awareness 129
collaborative learning 3, 16, 154, 166 cultural studies 102
course structures and 156, 159 VSM project 93
and language learning 120, 122, 124
QuILT program 69 deep approach to learning 98, 207
and simulation/role play 175 assessment to stimulate 208
commodity culture 96, 97 design 24, 90
communication 3 and assessment and feedback 209
between learners and/or teachers 248, designer’s beliefs 85
248 DNER projects analysed 27
feedback and 245, 253 LaSWoP project 106
see also CMC (computer-mediated of medical triggers 83, 83
communication) Multiple Representation approach 51
communities of inquiry 250 simulations to promote scientific
communities of practice 155, 167, 174 inquiry 37
competence 105, 183 to enhance collaboration 175
assessment and 181 usability and integration issues 92
and multimedia object selection 52 VSM project 93
competency-based learning 106 diagnostics 228, 265
complex systems 11, 20, 20 discussions, course 135
computer conferencing design model 169, online 135, 137, 149, 154
170, 170 online and feedback 235, 238
computer games 91, 93
computer simulations 40, 168
INDEX 275
online verbal immediacy behaviours maximizing benefits 246

138 model of effective 234, 234
rhetorical features 125 in multimedia environments 92
see also CMC sources 233
DNER (Distributed National Electronic strategies to enhance e-learning 250,
Resource) 26, 27, 35 264
evaluation of projects 26, 27, 30, 33, timing 233, 252, 262, 264
34 and Web-based discussion boards 238
domain knowledge 49, 60 and Web-based simulations 235
Multiple Representation and 51 see also assessment
see also content feedback loops 234, 235
dynamic assessment 47, 218 field education 114
flowcharts 58
e-learning 254, 257, 267 formative assessment 196, 206, 209, 217,
environments 242, 243, 244 219, 219, 221
feedback strategies to enhance 250
importance of feedback 243 Global Learning Environment (GLEA)
instructors and feedback 260 123, 123
and interactivity 246 graduated complexity 14, 15, 18
and resource evaluation 34 guided reflection 67
see also CMC gulfs of execution and evaluation 218, 219
ecological theory and second language
acquisition 122 humour 141, 144
educational design 24, 90
see also design identity development 130
educational objectives 206, 208, 209 immediacy behaviours 136, 150
elaborate feedback 235, 236 verbal in online discussions 138
elaboration and discourse 125 implicit theories of learning and change
emotions, students’ 198, 199, 199, 200 26, 27
epistemological beliefs 85 inductive logic 67
equilibrium model of social presence 137, infrastructures 172
138, 149 instructional systems design (ISD) 35
evaluation see assessment instructors see teachers
execution and evaluation, gulfs of 218, integration
219 of learning resources in curriculum
exemplars and feedback 265 226
experiential learning activities 166, 167 of technology-based resources 92, 100
see also simulations of theory-practice in social work 105,
106, 107, 114
fading 50, 222, 223 intelligent agents 249
feedback 6, 197, 208, 209, 232, 254, 257, Intelligent Tutoring Applications (ITAs)
266 227
assessment and 206 intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) 227
educational role and impact of 258 Intelligent Tutoring Tools see ITTs
impact on learning 232 interaction 3, 47, 153, 167, 181, 242
implications for instructors 260 course structures and 156
importance of 243 discursive interaction and learning 106
276 INDEX
e-learning and 246, 247, 248 audience awareness and agency 127
and language learning 121, 125 beliefs 85
with multimedia 90, 110 challenges 15
with peers 212 cross-cultural awareness 129
VSM project 94 development 14, 15, 17, 20
see also feedback and feedback 232, 234, 244, 258
interactive immediacy indicators 139, 143, and interaction 47, 246, 247
147, 147, 148 knowledge acquisition 218, 219, 220
Internet see e-learning; motivation 91, 122, 197
web-based learning and ‘Mythica’ 173
InterSim system 56, 59 persistence 259
MR approach in 56 power and identity 122, 130
ISD (instructional systems design) 35 prior knowledge 78
ITAs (Intelligent Tutoring Applications) and problem-based learning 78
227 reluctant contributors 260
ITSs (intelligent tutoring systems) 227 roles 245, 246, 247
ITT (Intelligent Tutoring Tools) 221, 222, self-regulating 40, 234
223, 224 verbal immediacy behaviours 138
evaluation of 225 learning
extending methodology on to the dimensions of 12
Internet 227 goal-oriented 38
process modelling 228 impact of feedback on 232
nature of 219, 219
JISC (Joint Information Systems principles for effective 21
Committee) 27 revisiting material 52
role of assessment in 195, 196
knowledge acquisition 106, 154, 218 setting 24
and assessment 218, 219, 219 situated 12, 20, 94, 184
and cognitive apprenticeship 221 student approaches to 207, 208
skill acquisition phases 220 theories of 12, 26, 90, 93, 217, 258,
theories of 12 259
Kolb’s learning model 258, 259 learning cycle 258, 259
learning outcomes 4, 182, 196
L2 learning 120 and VSM project 100
networked, project-oriented 123 see also assessment
socialization and 121 learning portfolios 190, 200
through socialization with technology learning resources see resources
125 links, navigational 53, 56, 58, 60
language 120, 122 logic, inductive 67
see also L2 learning
LaSWoP (Law and Social Work Practice) meaning, negotiation of 121, 126, 127, 245
project 106, 108 media
learners linear 91
activity 24, 25 and medical triggers 83, 86
approaches to learning 207 and social presence 136
and assessment 196 see also multimedia technology
attention (‘noticing’) 121 media richness theory 136
INDEX 277
medical education noticing, concept of 121

problem-based learning in 77, 78
triggers 77, 79, 80, 80, 80, 81 ownership 161
triggers’ design considerations 83, 86
metacognition 65, 67 paralanguage 141, 144
and learner development 198, 199, 200, pattern recognition 39
201 pedagogy 90, 181
metaphors in the QuILT program 68, 69, and assessment 191
71, 73, 74 peer assessment 186, 188, 197
Model Facilitated Learning (MFL) 11, 21 peer feedback 233, 240, 264
potentials of models in learning 14, 15 as assessment component 266
theoretical background 12 and language learning 126, 127
modelling 11, 13, 50 performance-based assessment 183, 183
learning by 16, 18, 19, 221 personal feedback 263
models 11, 13 photographs 84
building 13, 16 portfolios and assessment 190, 200
learning with 16, 16, 19 power relations 122, 130
and science education design 39, 40 practice-theory integration in social work
Motivated Learning Strategies 105, 106, 107, 114
Questionnaire (MSLQ) 199 presence 136, 250
motivation 91, 197 social 136, 138, 149, 153
and assessment 181, 199, 201, 205, prior knowledge 78
206 problem solving 37, 167
and feedback 208 and assessment 181, 188
and L2 learning 122 and cognitive skills acquisition 220
MR Approach see Multiple Representation pattern recognition and 39
Approach problem-based learning 12, 38, 78
multimedia technology 49 BioBLAST (*) program 38, 41, 42, 45
and cognitive apprenticeship 51, 51 in medical education 79, 80
and cognitive skills 50 and models 17
interactiveness of 90 and prior knowledge 78
and L2 learning 120 PrOCALL (Project-Orientated Computer-
objects integration 56, 56 Assisted Language Learning) project
objects selection 52, 60, 83, 84, 86 120, 123, 125, 125
web-based environments 91 process modelling 228
within social work education 112 professional education see medical
within teacher education 64 education ;
Multiple Representation (MR) Approach social work education;
50 teacher education
in the InterSim system 56, 59, 58 project-based learning 167, 171
presentation of domain content 51 and language learning 123, 125, 127,
multiple representations 12, 18, 19, 91 131
multi-sensory channels 53, 56 and peer feedback 240
‘Mythica’ 170 project logic maps 34, 34
navigational links 53, 56, 58, 60 quality 67

negotiation of meaning 121, 126, 127, 245
278 INDEX
‘QuILT: Quality in Learning and SLA (second language acquisition) 120

Teaching’ 64, 65 acculturation and identity 122
constructivism and 65 interactionist 121
metaphors used to frame 68, 69, 71, 73, role of first language 126
74 socio-interactive SLA theory 121
trends arising from use 73 see also L2 learning
social construction of knowledge 121, 153,
reflection 260 154, 155, 161
and assessment 208, 211 social constructivism 154, 166
guided 67 social efficiency movement 217
and knowledge acquisition 219 social interaction
in social work education 114 and L2 learning 121, 125
resources 24, 25, 34 see also socialization
and assessment 183 social presence 136, 138, 149, 153, 250
DNER and 26, 27 social work 104, 116
DNER projects analysed 27, 30, 33, 34 social work education 104, 105, 116
social work education 112 context 105
see also content LaSWoP project 107
rhetorical relationships 125, 125 multimedia developments within 112
role-play 167, 168 practice-theory integration 106
in e-learning environments 169, 172 socialization 3
see also simulations and online course discussions 135
second language learning through 120
scaffolding 66, 121, 154, 173, 223 through CMC 153
science 37, 40 through simulation/role play 165
and assessment 217 socio-interactive SLA theory 121
promoting scientific inquiry 37 students see learners
scientific method 232 subject matter content 1, 2, 91
second languages see L2 learning; see also content
SLA summative assessment 196, 206, 209, 217,
self-assessment 197, 208 219, 220, 221
self-authoring 109, 110, 113, 115 surface approach to learning 207, 208
self-disclosure 141, 144 system dynamics 11, 16, 17, 21, 21
self-regulation 40, 234
shockwave movies 84 teacher education 75
simulations 11, 17, 58, 167 multimedia within 64
in e-learning environments 169, 172 ‘QuILT CD ROM program 64, 65
feedback and web-based simulations teachers
235 and assessment 216
medical triggers 77, 79, 80, 80, 80, 81 beliefs 85
to promote scientific inquiry 37, 233 as course designers 232
VSM project 93 electronic connections between 47
see also modelling and feedback 198, 232, 260
situated cognition 66 immediacy behaviours 136, 137, 144,
situated learning 12, 20, 94, 184 150
skill acquisition 220 implementing software 226
see also knowledge acquisition and ‘Mythica’ 173
INDEX 279
role xv, 166, 246, 247, 270

and socialization 155
testing 181
theory-practice integration in social work
105, 106, 107, 114
TLTP (Teaching and Learning Technology
Programme) 26
triggers see medical education
tutoring strategies 49, 50
Understand Management Accounting

package 225
usability of technology-based resources 92,
101
verbal immediacy behaviours 136

in online discussions 138
video 84
virtual reality (VR) 58
BioBLAST (*) program 40, 41, 43, 45
Virtual Shopping Mall (VSM) project 89,
93, 102
activating learning through 93
integration and evaluation 100
scenario 95, 96, 98, 99
web-based learning 91
discussion boards 238
forms for assessment 265
ITT methodology 227
language learning 125, 131
simulations and feedback 235
VSM project 93
Zuckerman Affect Adjective Checklist

(AACL) 200, 200

Learning and Teaching With Technology

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LEARNING & TEACHING WITH

Edited by Som Naidu

London and Sterling, VA

ISBN 0-203-41689-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-44291-1 (Adobe eReader Format)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Notes on contributors vii

Part I. Content representation

Part II. Activation of learning

7. Virtual learning in cultural studies: matching subject 90

Part III. Providing socialization support

Part IV. Assessment of learning outcomes

Part V. Providing feedback

18. Interactivity and feedback as determinants of 243

Commentary. On learning and teaching with technology: 270

John Baird is from the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne.

conceptualization and development of triggers for medical problems, reflects a

physiology and is also active in experimental research in physiology and

Kinshuk is from the Information Systems Department at Massey University,

Texas A&M University, 703 Harrington Tower, College Station, TX 77843–

Address: Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. E-mail:

Those of us involved in teaching and training are facing unprecedented

This edited collection by Som Naidu makes a significant contribution to

Several people have contributed to the successful completion of this book

The use of information and communications technology (ICT) in education is

• subject matter representation;

engaged in live and authentic classroom activities can be employed to scaffold

collaboration and community building can be supported in a computer-mediated

1. Feedback is most potent when it corrects errors.

Furthermore, as suggested by Kulhavy, feedback is also distinguishable

Bangert-Drowns, R L, Kulik, C-L C, Kulik, J A and Morgan, M T (1991) The

Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbuilt (1993) Designing learning environments

understanding of complex, dynamic systems (Davidsen, 1996; Forrester, 1985;

• understanding the effects of non-linear relationships over time;

A theoretically grounded framework

learning (Feltovich et al, 1996; Kozma, 2000). As knowledge is used and

1. Situate the learning experience. Provide an opening scenario or a concrete

The potentials of models in learning

1. problem-orientation (problem confronting and problem solving), in which

Table 1.1 MFL, learning development and related models

1. Challenge learners to characterize the standard behaviour of the complex

an underlying structure similar to a problem situation already resolved by

Throughout the various stages learners are challenged to start meaningful

Learning with models

presented by van Joolingen (2000) that discovery behaviour displayed by

Figure 1.1 Multiple representations

Learning by modelling and learning with models

Table 1.2 Computational media to supportlearning about complex domains

1. Principle of Problem Centeredness: Learning is effective when learners are

Figure 1.2 Using system dynamics simulation

Davidsen, P I and Spector, J M (1997) Cognitive complexity in system dynamics based

Proceedings, ed R Robson, pp 304–8, Association for the Advancement of

significant conclusion from these studies was that, in general, insufficient

Implicit theories of learning and change

The study context

a managed environment for accessing quality assured information

It is funded by the JISC—the Joint Information Systems Committee of the four

participants to spend 10 minutes drafting a response, without conferring. It was

The responses of the participants were typed into a single word-processor