Research and Best Practices for Supporting Online Learning

1. Research Center for Educational Technology Research and Best Practices forSupporting Online Learning Karen Swan Kent State University

2. “no significant difference” phenomenon • Thomas L. Russell’s (1999) comparison of 355 research reports on distance education • Barry & Runyan’s (1995) review of distance education in the military • Hiltz, Zhang & Turoff’s (2002) survey of 19 empirical studies

3. beyond “no significant differences” • Clark (1983) vs. Kozma (1991) • Carol Twigg (2000) – biggest obstacle to innovation in online learning is thinking things can and should be done the same old way • paradigm change

4. interaction • interaction with content (Moore, 1989) • interaction with instructors (Moore, 1989) • interaction with classmates (Moore, 1989) • interaction with interface (Hillman, Willis & Gunawardena, 1994)

5. interaction w/ interface SOCIAL COGNITIVE interaction PRESENCE PRESENCE w/content interaction w/ peers TEACHING PRESENCE interaction w/instructors LEARNING adapted from Rourke, Anderson, Garrison & Archer (2001)

6. interaction with content • design principles • course design factors • scaffolding online discussion • studies of learning differing kinds of content

7. course assignments affect course design instructor instructor /discussion instructor feedback learning interaction w/ content content analysis– “additional comments:” (Swan, Schenker, Lin, Shea & Aviv, 2006)

8. interaction w/ content course design principles • clear goals and expectations • multiple representations of knowledge • active learning • feedback • flexibility / learner control • faculty guidance & support (Janicki & Liegle, 2001; Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996; Keeton, Scheckley & Griggs, 2002)

9. interaction w/ content course design factors • clear structure • navigational transparency • consistency • communication potential • active learning (Romiszowski & Cheng, 1991; Eastmond, 1995; Irani, 1998; Swan, Shea, Frederickson, Pickett, Pelz & Maher, 2000; Picciano, 2002)

10. interaction w/ content scaffolding online discussion • concept & process scaffolds (Wong-Busby, 2006) • peer review -- Bloom’s taxonomy (Ertmer, Richardson, Belland, Coulthard, Camin & Mong, 2006) • subject line (Pelz, 2004) • assessment issues (Swan, Shen & Hiltz, 2006)

11. interaction w/ content differing kinds of content • learning concepts vs. learning techniques • multiple perspectives • disciplined inquiry – reflection and interaction (Benbunan-Fich & Hiltz, 1999; Parker & Gemino, 2001; Picciano, 2002; Garrison, 2003)

12. studies of changing instructor roles • studies of teaching presence • experimental studies • survey data interaction with instructors

13. interaction w/ instructors survey data on interactions w/ instructors • strong correlations between learners’ perceived interactions and their perceived learning (Picciano, 1998; Richardson & Ting, 1999; Swan, Shea, Fredericksen, Pickett, Pelz & Maher, 2000; Jiang & Ting, 2000; Richardson & Swan, 2003)

14. course assignments affect course design instructor instructor /discussion instructor feedback learning interaction w/ instructors content analysis– “additional comments:” (Swan, Schenker, Lin, Shea & Aviv, 2006)

15. interaction w/ instructors instructor roles • (Berge, 1995) – managerial, social, pedagogical, technical • (Paulson, 1995) – organizational, social, intellectual • (Rossman, 1999) – teacher responsibility, facilitating discussions, course requirements

16. interaction w/ instructors (Coppola, Hiltz & Rotter, 2001) changing instructor roles • cognitive, affective, managerial • cognitive role shifts to one of deeper complexity • affective role requires faculty to find new tools to express emotion • managerial role requires greater attention to detail, more structure, additional student monitoring

17. interaction w/ instructors teaching presence • “the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile outcomes” (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison & Archer, 2001) • design & organization, facilitating discourse, direct instruction • strong correlations between survey measures of all three aspects of teaching presence and student satisfaction and perceived learning in online courses (Shea, Frederickson, Pickett & Pelz, 2003; Shea, Pickett & Pelz, 2004)

18. interaction w/ instructors teaching presence: instructors (Shea, et al., 2003, 2004) SUMMER 2002 (n=1140) SPRING 2003 (n=6088) per. learn. satisfaction per. learn. satisfaction per. learn.

19. interaction w/ instructors teaching presence • importance of “restrained presence”(Vandergrift, 2002) • importance of applying principles of collaborative learning to online discussion – structuring interaction in authentic tasks, applying questioning strategies, role assignment, interdependence, reflection(Wu, 2003)

20. interaction w/ instructors experimental studies • Riccomini (2002) -- students receiving instructor delivered corrective feedback outperform students using web-based exemplary models • Kashy, Albertelli, Bauer, Kashy & Thoennessen (2003) – students interacting on instructor supported homework discussion board outperform students just visiting; both outperform students using a third party homework site

21. interaction with peers • student perceptions • social presence and teaching presence of students • virtual interaction • virtual learning communities

22. interaction w/ classmates student perceptions • online discussion is more equitable and more democratic (Harasim, 1990; Levin, Kim & Riel, 1990) • online discussion is more reflective and mindful (Hiltz, 1994; Poole, 2000) • links between % of course grade based on discussion and perceived learning (Hawisher & Pemberton, 1997; Picciano, 1998; Jiang & Ting, 2000; Swan, Shea, Fredericksen, Pickett, Pelz & Maher, 2000)

23. interaction w/ classmates social presence

24. interaction w/ classmates social presence • “the perceived psychological distance between communication participants” • participants in asynchronous communication project their identities into their communications & so create social presence (Walther, 1994; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Poole, 2000; Richardson & Swan, 2001; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison & Archer, 2001; Swan, 2001)

25. interaction w/ classmates social presence: equilibrium model (Danchak, Walther & Swan, 2001; Swan, 2002) immediacy immediacy immediacy SOCIAL PRESENCE affective communication channel affective communication channel affective communication channel

26. interaction w/ classmates social presence: interaction & performance • perceived social presence, perceived interactions, perceived learning all correlated • but perceived social presence not correlated with either actual interactions or actual performance • however, students perceiving high social presence performed significantly better on written assignments • as did highly interactive students (Picciano, 2002)

27. interaction w/ classmates social presence: perception & presentation • content analyses show students perceiving highest social presence also projected themselves more into class discussion • interview data reveal interesting differences in perceptions of and approaches to online discussion between students perceiving the most and least social presence (Swan & Shih, 2005)

28. interaction w/ classmates social presence: instructors & peers (Swan & Shih, 2005) • perceived social presence of peers and instructors highly correlated; used regression analyses to tease apart • social presence of peers only predictor of perceived interaction • social presence of instructors only predictor of satisfaction • social presence of instructors accounts for twice as much of the variance in perceived learning as social presence of peers

29. interaction w/ classmates teaching presence: students (Shea, et al., 2003, 2004) SUMMER 2002 (n=1140) SPRING 2003 (n=6088) per. learn. satisfaction per. learn. satisfaction per. learn.

30. interaction w/ classmates social presence & course design • social context -- task orientation, perceptions of privacy, topics, and social processes • online communication -- language course participants use to communicate and express themselves • interactivity -- reciprocal communication patterns, timeliness of responses (Tu, 2000; Tu & McIssac, 2002)

31. instructor learner learner learner interaction w/ classmates virtual interactivity (Sutton, 2001)

32. interaction w/ classmates virtual learning communities • stems from research on face-to-face learning that suggests that all learning takes place in communities (Lave & Wenger, 1990; Wenger, 1997) • knowledge building communities (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996; Hunter, 2002; Hoadly & Pea,2002) • social support for learning (Hawthornthwaite, 2002) • intersection of social organization and learning activities; particular interactions of participants in online communities (Nolan & Weiss, 2002; Renninger & Shumar, 2002)

33. interaction w/ classmates virtual learning communities: SCCI • Sense of Classroom Community Index (SCCI) --spirit, trust, interaction, learning subscales • no significant differences in overall sense of community between traditional and online classes • But much greater variability in online sense of community and top 5/7 online courses report significantly greater sense of community • significant difference in conceptual structure of community (Rovai, 2002)

34. interaction w/ classmates sense of community & teaching presence • significant correlations were found between students’ sense of community and indicators of teaching presence • directed facilitation accounts for 45% of the variance in sense of community • instructional design accounts for 2% of the variance in sense of community (Shea, Li, Swan, & Pickett, 2005)

35. research on patterns in threaded discussion • research on multimedia learning • design experiments • interface studies interaction with interface

36. 32 132 1 1 1 1 51 23 52 52 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 3 interaction w/ interface patterns in threaded discussion (Hewitt, 2003) 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4

37. interaction w/ interface patterns in threaded discussion (Hewitt, 2003) • user logs -- 97.6% read messages before posting, 82% read only messages flagged as unread, 90% respond to messages < 48 hours old • Monte Carlo simulation • “patterns of interactivity in online discussion are governed as much by a feature of the interface (flagging unread notes) as by course requirements, learner characteristics and/or teaching presence”

38. interaction w/ interface multimedia research (Mayer, 2001) • many years of experimental research, replicated multiple times, on the effectiveness of differing media combinations for supporting student learning of science explanations demonstrates that some media combinations are better than others

39. interaction w/ interface (Mayer, 2001)

40. interaction w/ interface design experiments:Pew Course Redesigns (Twigg, 2003) • whole course redesign • active learning • computer-based learning resources • mastery learning • on-demand help/alternative staffing

41. interaction w/ interface experimental studies • Lin (2002) -- animation more supportive of learning than video • Chang, Sung & Chiou (2002) -- Hierarchical Hypermedia Concept Map (HHCM) interface more supportive of learning than linear interface; students using it also take significantly less time to learn than students using either linear or hierarchical interface • Gutl & Pivec (2003) -- Virtual Tutor expert/multimedia system better supports student problem solving than traditional print-based resources

42. interaction w/ interface interaction w/content interaction w/ peers LEARNING interaction w/ instructors implications for practice

43. interaction w/ content

44. interaction w/ content

45. interaction w/ content

46. interaction w/ content

47. interaction w/ instructors

48. interaction w/ instructors

49. interaction w/ instructors

50. interaction w/ classmates