Communication Structures and Student Activities in Distance Education Courses

1. Communication Structures and Student Activities in Distance Education Courses A Content Analysis of Interactions in Newsgroups

2. course offering study (off- and online) Hybrid distance education courses real campus virtual campus

3. Communication in a distance learning scenario Tele-Tutoring: a facilitator and students communicate and cooperate with new media Synchronous communication: video conference, chat Asynchronous communication: e-mail, newsgroups Social contact: learning groups during the online phase and offline meetings 3 times a year Cooperation: learning tasks have to be solved in cooperation and the coordination has to be done using new media (newsgroups)

4. The institution of education „tele-akademie“ (http://www.tele-ak.de) at the Technical College of Furtwangen, Germany Course title: „Expert of New Learning Technologies (ENLT)“, combines different themes: Media Informatics, Media Pedagogy, Media Didactics and Management of Education; duration: 1 year 1. semester: theory, 2. semester: realization of a media project Media technologies implemented: Newsgroup, Chat, Video conference system, Application sharing, BSCW (Basic Support Collaborative Work) Data collection 2000, 7 newsgroups from 2 different semsters Data set: Newsgroups (n = 7) ____________________________________________________ Students (n = 47) Gender Devision Facilitators (n = 7) Women (n = 25, 53%) Support (n = 3) Men (n = 22, 47%) ___________________________________ Total (n = 57)

5. Why Newsgroups? Own experiences as a facilitator of two different courses Few research about asynchronous communication Research interest wheather a dialog is possible in asynchronous communication (newsgroup) Quantitative (and qualitative) analysis of text-based asynchronous communication Long term overview about all messages Messages can be posted at any time, they can be written time-independant and well elaborated

6. Quantitative content analysis of newsgroups Quantitative content analysis (Berelson, 1952; Früh, 2001; Merten, 1995 and Mayring, 2004) „Content analysis is a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication“ (Berelson, 1952, S. 18) Systematization of communication and characteristics of messages Category building (following McGrath and Hollingshead, 1994) Inductive and deductive procedure (following Mayring, 2000) Codebook for encoders (following Rafaeli and Sudweeks, 1993) Reliability (Cohen´s Kappa, 1960) Research approach in codes (codebook rules) and words (total amount of each code)

7. Category system for the analysis of newsgroups (Petschenka, 2005) Topical categories: (1) Content, (2) Group organization, (3) Social group dynamic, (4) Technics, (5) Private Functional categories: (1) Initial message, (2) Reference Dialog or no dialog?

8. Communication structures in newsgroups: codes

9. Mean Value: Codes All n=57 (codes) topical categories All n=57 (codes) topical and functional categories All facilitators n=10 (codes) topical and functional categories All students n=47 (codes) topical and functional categories

10. Mean Value: Codes All n=57 (codes) topical categories All n=57 (codes) topical and functional categories All facilitators n=10 (codes) topical and functional categories All students n=47 (codes) topical and functional categories

11. Results of communication: codes For students: Most important category: social group dynamic (31 and 32) Content production: more initial messages than references Group organization: initial messages and references equal Dialog: group organization, social group dynamic and technics

12. Mean Value: Codes All n=57 (codes) topical categories All n=57 (codes) topical and functional categories All facilitators n=10 (codes) topical and functional categories All students n=47 (codes) topical and functional categories

13. Results of communication: codes For students: Most important category: social group dynamic (31 and 32) Content production: more initial messages than references Group organization: initial messages and references equal Dialog: group organization, social group dynamic and technics For facilitators: Most important category: group organization (initial message) Content production: marginal Social group dynamic: important category mostly references Dialog: social group dynamic and technics

14. Communication structures in newsgroups: words

15. Mean Value: Words All n=57 (words) topical categories All n=57 (words) topical and functional categories All students n=47 (words) topical and functional categories All facilitators n=10 (words) topical and functional categories

16. Mean Value: Words All n=57 (words) topical categories All n=57 (words) topical and functional categories All students n=47 (words) topical and functional categories All facilitators n=10 (words) topical and functional categories

17. Results of communication: words For students: Most important category: content (initial message, long messages but no dialog) Group organization: students write short messages Social group dynamic: similar to group organization, but less words Dialog: group organization, social group dynamic, technics

18. Mean Value: Words All n=57 (words) topical categories All n=57 (words) topical and functional categories All students n=47 (words) topical and functional categories All facilitators n=10 (words) topical and functional categories

19. Results of communication: words For students: Most important category: content (initial message, long messages but no dialog) Group organization: students write short messages Social group dynamic: similar to group organization, but less words Dialog: group organization, social group dynamic, technics For facilitators: Most important category: content (initial messages and references) Group organization: long messages, mostly initial messages Social group dynamic: less words needed for lots of codes Dialog: social group dynamic and technics

20. Communication structures in newsgroups: gender differences

21. Communication structures of women and men Women n=25 (codes) Men n=22 (codes) Women n=25 (words) Men n=22 (words)

22. Differences in gender communication Women use all categories for the discussion Women´s content production: longer references than men – assumption: women are more content dialog orientated Women need more technical support than men, or they discuss more frankly about technical themes (e.g. peer-support) Men write long messages about content and focus on initial messages Men write less codes than women: less dynamic of communication Men write short messages in the following categories: group organization, social group dynamic, technics and private

23. Communication structures in newsgroups: member activities

24. Abb. 3: Presentation of 5 different communication characters

25. Abb. 3: Presentation of 5 different communication characters

26. Results of the cluster method: member activities Cluster method: Cluster 1: content references and technics (initial and references) Cluster 2: content orientated (almost initial messages) Cluster 3: social and organizational initiative orientated Cluster 4: social and organizational dialog orientated Cluster 5: content initial messages and organizational references Cluster method and activity degrees (passive, partly active, active) 21 students = 45%

27. Results of the cluster method: member activities Cluster method: Cluster 1: content references and technics (initial and references) Cluster 2: content orientated (almost initial messages) Cluster 3: social and organizational initiative orientated Cluster 4: social and organizational dialog orientated Cluster 5: content initial messages and organizational references Cluster method and activity degrees (passive, partly active, active) Activity degrees: Tendency: either passive and partly aktive students or partly aktive and aktive students 11 (23%) active students in cluster 2

28. Communication structures in newsgroups: phase model of group development (students)

29. Abb. 4 time table of the students communication

30. Results of the phase model of group development: students All three weeks learning materials and learning tasks were offered First of all, students communicate about social and technical themes to overwhelm the technical barrier and the reduced social skills (community building, realizing group processes in newsgroups) With the beginning of the learning task, students are willed to cooperate together: With the beginning of the first learning task (LT, low cooperate task) students beginn to organize the task and a textual discussion With the beginning of the second learning task (LT, high cooperate task) students have to organize the task before the textual discussion LT = Learning Task

31. Communication structures in newsgroups: phase model of group development (facilitators)

32. Abb. 5 time table of the facilitator communication

33. Results of the time series: facilitator First, facilitators structure the newsgroup and answer sometimes textual questions about learning materials Facilitators submit the learning tasks into the newsgroup and give organizational advices Facilitators support students during the course semester in social and technical affairs LT = Learning Task

34. Communication structures in newsgroups: conclusions

35. Results of the analysis: students Development of an intense group identity after the first learning task, e.g. SIDE Model (Reicher et al, 1995) and Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) Social group dynamic is the most important category for the discussion in newsgroups to overwhelm the technical barrier Before the first learning task: high social group dynamic Technical support necessary, especially in the beginning Content is produced while solving the learning tasks, less cooperative tasks are solved from the beginning, more cooperative tasks need to be organized before producing content Dialog A textual dialog can not be identified, but women are more content dialog orientated than men A dialog can be identified for the categories: group organization, social group dynamic and technics

36. Results of the analysis: facilitators Functions: e-moderation, organizational, technical and social experts Between the learning tasks: motivation to minimize the drop-out rate Content: few codes and lots of words – submission of learning tasks Group organization: structuring of newsgroups (main threads) and support of task organization Social group dynamic: universal support, especially in the beginning, numerous codes but short messages Technics: continuously support, lots of references Dialog A textual dialog can not be identified, submission of tasks Mostly in the categories social group dynamic and technics

37. Recommendations Regularly phases of attendance to counter reduction of the media channel; Reduced social cues (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986) Hybrid learning arrangement (Kerres, 2001) Media didactic conception (Kerres, 2001) Balance: Instruction and Construction (Reinmann-Rothmeier and Mandl, 2001) Facilitators: skills and competencies (Rautenstrauch, 2001; Salmon, 2000) Learning tasks orientated on target group, applied to the learning material and praxis-orientated exemples, cooperative tasks (Petschenka, Ojstersek, Kerres, 2004) Permanent technical support by the institution or by the facilitators (Petschenka, 2005)

38. Thank you for your attention! Dr. Anke Petschenka, University of Education, Weingarten/Germany http://www.anke-petschenka.de petschenka@ph-weingarten.de Prof. Dr. Michael Kerres, University Duisburg-Essen/Germany http://online-campus.net/edumedia/ kerres@uni-duisburg-essen.de